Martin Rees Quotes

We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands.

If we do find ET, we will at least have something in common with them. They may live on planet Zog and have seven tentacles, but they will be made of the same kinds of atoms as us. If they have eyes, they will gaze out on the same cosmos as we do. They will, like us, trace their origins back to a 'Big Bang' 13.8 billion years ago.

We people of the Earth exist because our potential was there in the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago, as the universe exploded into being.

Earlier theories ... were based on the hypothesis that all the matter in the universe was created in one big bang at a particular time in the remote past. [Coining the "big bang" expression.]

Scientists estimate the universe unfolded from its state of infinite destiny* - a moment commonly referred to as "the big bang" - approximately 1.3-2 x 10^10 years ago. *Typo: "destiny" should read "density.

I was there when Abbe Georges Lemaître first proposed this [Big Bang] theory. ... There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. .... It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago.

The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.

We've begun at last to wonder about our origins, star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms contemplating the evolution of matter, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet Earth and perhaps throughout the cosmos. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.

The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it.

I feel that I've often pointed out that there are countless aspects of life and nature that scientists and scientific thinkers cannot explain. Why the universe is accelerating in its expansion and what came before the Big Bang serve as compelling examples. The process of science provides a way to seek answers to those questions.

Ancient stars in their death throes spat out atoms like iron which this universe had never known. ... Now the iron of old nova coughings vivifies the redness of our blood.

Forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.

I have never thought that you could obtain the extremely clumpy, heterogeneous universe we have today, strongly affected by plasma processes, from the smooth, homogeneous one of the Big Bang, dominated by gravitation.

A single message from space will show that it is possible to live through technological adolescence. . . . It is possible that the future of human civilization depends on the receipt of interstellar messages.

The destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.

The big bang theory requires a recent origin of the Universe that openly invites the concept of creation.

The molecules that comprise our body are traceable to the crucibles of the centers of stars.These atoms and molecules are in us because, in fact, the universe is in us. And, we are not only figuratively, but literally, stardust.

Yes, we too are stardust.

I am stardust gathered fleetingly into form.

We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands. The loom of time and space works the most astonishing transformations of matter.

If you see, in the spectrum of a planet host star, strange chemical elements, it can be a signal from a civilization which is there.

The atoms that make up your body were once forged inside stars, and the causes of even the smallest event are virtually infinite and connected with the whole in incomprehensible ways.

Dilbert: It took weeks but I've calculated a new theory about the origin of the universe. According to my calculations it didn't start with a "Big Bang" at all-it was more of "Phhbwt" sound. You may be wondering about the practical applications of the "Little Phhbwt" theory. Dogbert: I was wondering when you'll go away.

If the fate of the universe was decided in a single moment at the instant of the Big Bang , that was the most creative moment of all.

In three minutes, 98 percent of all the matter there is or will ever be has been produced. We have a universe