Martin Rees Quotes

Our physical senses and our embodied brains allow us to perceive only a small fraction of reality. We cannot see microbes or untraviolet light, for example. We can hear only a small range of sounds. When we try to describe the otherworld of energies and spirits, we are limited not only by our bodily constraints but by the expectations, assumptions, and language patterns ingrained in us by the culture we were raised in.

We may be surrounded by some greater reality, to which we are oblivious. And even if we could somehow perceive it in some entirely new way, it is extremely doubtful we would be able to comprehend what we perceived.

Intelligent life can't be all that common because it's really rare on Earth and especially since we define ourselves to be intelligent. But in the eyes of an alien coming here who has the technology to make it here, they might observe us and conclude that there's no sign of intelligent life on Earth.

The fact that we have not yet found the slightest evidence for life - much less intelligence - beyond this Earth does not surprise or disappoint me in the least. Our technology must still be laughably primitive, we may be like jungle savages listening for the throbbing of tom-toms while the ether around them carries more words per second than they could utter in a lifetime.

It's worth remembering that all technology leaves a footprint. For example, our own technology is leaving a footprint in terms of global warming, which could be detected from a long way away. One assumes that a very advanced civilization that has been around maybe millions and millions of years would have an even bigger footprint that might extend beyond its planet to its immediate astronomical environment.

Chances are, when we meet intelligent life forms in outer space they're going to be descended from predators.

By reflecting a little on this subject I am almost convinced that those numberless small Circuses we see on the moon are the works of the Lunarians and may be called their Towns.

Technology is therefore no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing. If we give heed to this, then another whole realm for the essence of technology will open itself up to us. It is the realm of revealing, i.e., of truth

I hope Let Me In doesn't encourage it! I mean, vampires might be real! Honestly, I don't know. It's like saying aliens are real. I don't know. We are so tiny in the spectrum of the universe, we're a speck of dust compared to some galaxies, and so who knows what's out there? We barely even know our own - we know more about space than we know about our own sea.

There are countless space activities that would be no less exciting than the moon missions were, I have no doubt. The search for life on Mars, for example.

The question that motivates my research is, if we can put a man on the Moon with 100,000 [people], what can we do with 100 million?

[Formula One racing] will be very different - as the technology will be very different and that will make fans consume it in a completely different way. I said before that I believe that Virtual Reality will hit it big time.

Technological change defines the horizon of our material world as it shapes the limiting conditions of what is possible and what is barely imaginable. It erodesassumptions about the nature of our reality, the "pattern" in which we dwell, and lays open new choices.

Since I was really little, I've just always had an obsession with, not just science fiction, but science and space. And also because as time passes and the more advanced science becomes, the more interesting it becomes.

We should go boldly where man has not gone before. Fly by the comets, visit asteroids, visit the moon of Mars. There's a monolith there. A very unusual structure on this potato shaped object that goes around Mars once in seven hours. When people find out about that they're going to say 'Who put that there? Who put that there?' The universe put it there. If you choose, God put it there.

This virtual reality stuff is the technological equivalent, really, of psychedelics.

Statistically it's a certainty there are hugely advanced civilizations, intelligences, life forms out there. I believe they're so advanced they're even doing interstellar travel. I believe it's possible they even came here.

I certainly believe in aliens in space, and that they are indeed visiting our planet. They may not look like us, but I have very strong feelings that they have advanced beyond our mental capabilities.

Cyberspace is an accident of the real. Virtual reality is the accident of reality itself.

I have been monitoring your earthly broadcasts for many years.

Life and Reality are not things you can have for yourself unless you accord them to all others. They do not belong to particular persons any more than the sun, moon and stars.

Art used to be painting, sculpture, music, etc, but now, all technology has become art. Of course, this form of art is still very primitive, but it is slowly replacing reality.

The extension of life beyond Earth is the most important thing we can do as a species.

Look at the moon in the sky, not the one in the lake.