Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Rees on absurdity

We came across the following comment from Sir Martin Rees and found it a wonderfully concise (and wildly thought-provoking) expression of absurdity...

“Most educated people are aware that we are the outcome of nearly 4 billion years of Darwinian selection, but many tend to think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans who watch the sun’s demise, 6 billion years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.”

2 comments:

  1. That's true. Or it's also possible that the demise of the Sun will be witnessed not by the Earthians but some other planet's residents? Whatever the case, but that humans are the culmination, is a false perception.

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  2. In the light of "Sir" Rees' statement am I the only one to see the irony here?

    Awards:

    Heineman Prize (1984)
    Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1987)
    Balzan Prize (1989) for High Energy Astrophysics
    Knighted (1992)
    Bruce Medal (1993)
    Bruno Rossi Prize (2000)
    Gruber Prize in Cosmology (2001)
    Henry Norris Russell Lectureship of the American Astronomical Society (2004)
    Lifeboat Foundation's Guardian Award (2004)
    Royal Society's Michael Faraday Prize for science communication (2004)
    Life Peerage (2005)
    Crafoord Prize, with James Gunn and James Peebles (2005)
    Order of Merit-the personal gift of The Queen (2007)
    Caird Medal of the National Maritime Museum (2007)

    Named after him:
    Asteroid 4587 Rees

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