Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast The Future of Us, with Sir Martin Rees About this episode Technology, space travel, a changing climate – What does the future hold for us? Neil deGrasse Tyson ponders humanity’s future alongside comic co-host Maeve Higgins and astrophysicist, author, and Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
0:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is StarTalk. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And tonight, my co-host is the inimitable Maeve Higgins.
0:31 Speaker 01 Hi, thank you. Oh, we're doing an elbow bump.
0:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? An elbow, yeah.
0:35 Speaker 01 That's nice. Is that so that you don't get like my germs?
0:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You get elbow germs only.
0:41 Speaker 01 I keep my elbows so clean.
0:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome back.
0:44 Speaker 01 Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.
0:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I don't think you've been back since you published your book Maeve, Maeve in America. Now, just I blurbed this book.
0:52 Speaker 01 You did.
0:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Will you allow me to read the blurb?
0:54 Speaker 01 Please.
0:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm gonna read the blurb.
0:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, I asked you, I said Neil, please read this book. You said, must I? And you agreed to read it, so thank you.
1:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So here's the blurb. Until space aliens land in America, Maeve Higgins from Ireland is the next best thing. She offers fresh and insightful perspectives from a faraway place on all we take for granted.
1:17 Speaker 01 Oh Neil, thank you.
1:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So good luck, good luck on that.
1:21 Speaker 01 Thank you. I'm green like an alien. Yeah.
1:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because we all know aliens are green, yes.
1:26 Speaker 01 You heard it here first.
1:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Tonight, we are talking about the future of humanity. And aren't many people you want to do that with because most people don't know what the hell they're talking about. But tonight, we got one of the deepest thinkers on this subject. And we brought in Sir Martin Rees, a friend and colleague of mine from way back. Sir Martin, welcome to StarTalk. Great to be here with you, Neil. Excellent. Thanks for doing this. You just came out with a book called On the Future. And you wrote a blurb for it? Yes. I got two for one here.
1:59 Speaker 01 I have a side hustle writing blurbs.
2:03 Speaker 01 How much did you pay to him to write your blurb?
2:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, he's in very good company. You can see the other people who've written blurbs. He's got some good folks here. Four pages worth of them, yes. Elon Musk. Governor Brown. Governor Brown. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna read my blurb if I may. Okay?
2:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? From climate change to biotech to artificial intelligence, science sits at the center of nearly all decisions that civilization confronts to assure its own survival. Martin Rees has created a primer on these issues and what we can do about them so that the next generation will think of us not as reckless custodians of their inheritance, but as brilliant shepherds of their birthright.
2:50 Speaker 01 Wow.
2:51 Speaker 02 That was great. That makes people actually want to read the book.
2:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, it sounds incredible.
2:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Martin, let me just give people just a little background. I don't know if I've told anyone this publicly, but when I was a graduate student, you were eminent now and like forever. You've been eminent in my field as an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge in England, was the original Cambridge was from.
3:17 Speaker 02 Proto Cambridge.
3:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Starter Cambridge. And as a graduate student at one of our sort of society conferences, I think I had a poster paper where you're not sort of far enough along for them to let you give a talk. So you just you put your paper up on a poster and you wait for people to come by. It's a passive delivery of your of your science. And you came up to my paper and you looked at it and you asked me questions about it. And you didn't have to do that. And you were, I felt that my future as a participating scientist was blessed, if you will, by your presence. And so I just want to thank you. Well, I don't know what you, how often you do that,
4:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? but I just want to thank you because what may have been little for you was big for me at the time.
4:09 Speaker 02 Well, great. And now it's the other way around. It's great for me to be with you today. Yeah, but then, of course, you were at Princeton University and you gave this wonderful course, which I didn't attend, but I read the book about it.
4:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, you did, okay, yes, yeah, ultimately, I postdoc at Princeton, then I taught there. But, so just want to thank you for all the work you've done, just, and you're like, he's like the last gentleman in the world.
4:36 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, well, that's really important, and that's really good for science, too, because I think ethics and morals are needed in science.
4:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right, it's just, it's, so, I'm just saying, they don't make them like him anymore.
4:49 Speaker 02 And you had a good book, and, but for you, the smaller your books are, the better they sell.
4:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, turns out, people don't like to read, I think, at the end of the day.
4:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, your tweets, though.
4:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah, yeah, so now it's in the, it's tweets.
5:01 Speaker 02 That's right, that's right.
5:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? People read, you know, 200-character tweets.
5:04 Speaker 01 I love the image of you, were you like in a row of graduate students, and then Sir Rees is just sort of walking by, and you're like, pick me, like the bachelor.
5:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm sure he spoke to more graduate students than me on that day. So let me just go down your, your sort of four-line bio here. Astronomer Royal, this is, didn't Edmund Halley have this or something?
5:28 Speaker 02 Well, that's right, of course, it was the person who ran the Greenwich Observatory, but that became a museum from the 1960s onwards, when, of course, we could have telescopes under clear skies elsewhere, but they kept the title.
5:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I see.
5:40 Speaker 02 And, so I have this just as a title, and...
5:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's only one Astronomer Royal?
5:44 Speaker 02 Only one, yes, but there were no duties, it's just honorary, and I like to say, the duties are so exiguous, I can do them posthumously, I need never give up.
5:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We don't want that to happen too soon.
5:55 Speaker 01 Also, I'm sure somebody else would like the role, you can take it with you to the afterlife.
6:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yes.
6:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow, so Astronomer Royal, that's so...
6:03 Speaker 02 But I, my day job is as a professor at Cambridge.
6:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And professor at Cambridge, so you were previously master at Trinity College.
6:10 Speaker 02 Yes.
6:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Director for the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University, and you are currently a professor, that we have similar ranks as we do here, professor of astronomy.
6:21 Speaker 02 Yes.
6:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? At University of Cambridge.
6:23 Speaker 02 Yes, yes. And a member of the UK House of Lords, so I'm a bit of a politician too.
6:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I got the member of the UK House of Lords and former president of the Royal Society.
6:30 Speaker 02 Which is like your National Academy.
6:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? National Academy, good, okay. Uh, our National Academy is where scientists elect the most eminent among us, so it's a peer voted representation of who and what we are internationally and to the government especially.
6:48 Speaker 01 I see, and the House of Lords is like.
6:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm getting it, I'm getting it. Okay, so now, so previously you were knighted. That's when you became Sir Martin Rees.
6:57 Speaker 02 Right, yes.
6:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you actually stand there in front of the Queen, and she holds a sword where she could tap your shoulder or cut your head off.
7:05 Speaker 02 She did the former.
7:08 Speaker 02 But then I got an upgrade to the House of Lords.
7:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, okay, so wait, so once you're knighted, then you are sir.
7:15 Speaker 02 Yes, yes.
7:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, now in the old days, that was, became hereditary, right? But is that not true anymore?
7:21 Speaker 02 That's not true. There was something called a baronet, which was hereditary, yeah.
7:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
7:25 Speaker 02 But Lords were hereditary and they're not anymore.
7:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
7:28 Speaker 01 You have to earn it.
7:29 Speaker 02 Well, in some sense you have to earn it. If you look at most of them, uh, they haven't really earned. And I would say that's.
7:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, he's talking smack.
7:39 Speaker 02 So being in the House of Lords is a privilege but not an honor.
7:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Nice, oh, interesting distinction.
7:44 Speaker 01 Yes, it is.
7:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I hadn't thought about separating those two. And so, don't you have to have some plot of land that you govern?
7:51 Speaker 02 You don't really, I mean, you have to, uh, designate a sort of area. And I picked Ludlow, which is the hometown in the west of England where I grew up.
8:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, okay, so you're lord of that patch of land?
8:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, but they don't recognize me, it doesn't mean anything to me.
8:06 Speaker 01 Can you just knock into any of the houses?
8:08 Speaker 02 No, no, no, no.
8:12 Speaker 01 Don't you know who I am?
8:13 Speaker 02 No rights there, but for historical reasons, you have to have a name of a place associated with you.
8:18 Speaker 01 I see. Well, thank you, thank you for not choosing Ireland.
8:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you're Lord of Ludlow?
8:24 Speaker 02 Yes.
8:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, very cool. I like the alliteration there. This is not your-
8:29 Speaker 02 And that doesn't mean I'm a Luddite.
8:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, nice. Very good. Lord of Ludo, not a Luddite.
8:34 Speaker 01 Not a Luddite.
8:36 Speaker 02 Right.
8:36 Speaker 01 On his iPhone as we speak.
8:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So this is not your first rodeo. On the future, you've got our cosmic habitat. Just six numbers.
8:47 Speaker 02 Yes.
8:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That was one of my favorites because people didn't know how dependent so much of our understanding of the universe was on just a few measurements that we were actively making then and still. And our final hour. I didn't read our final hour. That sounds, that doesn't sound happy.
9:05 Speaker 02 Well, it was, it was entitled in England, Our Final Century, question mark. They took the question mark off. And you Americans retitled it Our Final Hour because you like instant gratification. And the reverse.
9:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We like fast food, fast.
9:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
9:21 Speaker 01 That's incredible. That's so dramatic.
9:23 Speaker 02 In fact, a precursor of the present book. And it really addresses, you know, some of the big questions about what's happening in this century and why this century is special, even among the 45 million centuries where the Earth existed.
9:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, let me lead off with a question here because why should someone listen to an astrophysicist? Why not a futurist? Why, why is your insight deeper or more
9:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? accurate than a futurist might offer us in possibly writing the same titled book?
10:00 Speaker 02 Well, I don't recognize futurist as a real profession.
10:03 Speaker 01 Yeah, they're so irritating.
10:05 Speaker 02 Yes, I don't either. But, but, but obviously, I'm not-
10:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Depends on what they predict.
10:10 Speaker 02 Yeah. I'm not an astrologer. I have no crystal ball. So we can't make rabbi predictions.
10:15 Speaker 01 Typical Gemini.
10:18 Speaker 02 There's some predictions, but all I would say is that I could do a better job than economists can do.
10:24 Speaker 01 Oh.
10:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is it because you have you have knowledge of the laws of physics and how they shape what is possible and what is not possible?
10:33 Speaker 02 Well, I think so. I mean, just to take two examples from my book. We can't predict the very far future, but we can predict, I think you'd agree, that by 2050, the world will be more crowded. Nine billion people and the world will be warmer. CO2 emissions.
10:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, do we need you for that, though? I mean, come on now.
10:52 Speaker 02 No, we don't. No, no, no, but but but certainly people haven't listened. So the more people who can repeat these these things and say we need to prepare for them, the better. But of course, what we can't predict, whether you're a futurist or anything else, is technology that far ahead because the smartphone would have seen magic 25 years ago and the social implications of social media and all that. And therefore, when we looked at 2050 and beyond, we've got to keep our minds at least ajar to what now seems science fiction. And I discuss things, but accept that they are very uncertain.
11:27 Speaker 01 I definitely look to astrophysicists for future guidance because of the scope that you have.
11:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, we do think in deep time. I mean, we think deep backwards and forwards.
11:35 Speaker 02 Well, I think the one the one special thing is that, you know, most people now, unless they're fundamentalists or in parts of Islamic world, are aware of the four billion years of the past that's led to our emergence, our evolution. But I think.
11:49 Speaker 01 And there's plenty of people here in America who are still.
11:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's what he's saying.
11:53 Speaker 02 Yeah, yes. But I mean, even educated people who accept evolution and all that, they tend to think that we humans are the endpoint, the culmination. But I think as astronomers, we can't take that view because we know that the future is at least as long. The Earth will exist for another six billion years before the sun dies and the universe may go on expanding forever. And I like to quote Woody Allen. He said eternity is very long, especially towards the end. And so we should think of ourselves as a stage. And a theme of my book is that we are a very important transition stage. Because two things are going to happen this century. One is spreading beyond the earth for the first time. And the other perhaps is.
12:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You mean colonizing other locations in space?
12:39 Speaker 02 Yes. And another thing is, of course, having the the power to redesign ourselves by genetic techniques and cyborg techniques and interfaces with the electronics.
12:50 Speaker 01 Like more than just hair transplant?
12:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
12:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:53 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's right. And so that is something which is special this century and which makes the future more unpredictable, but more fascinating. So this is a crucial century. And of course, those exciting possibilities should be in our minds. But the downside is that because of this powerful technology, there are extra risks which we didn't have in the past.
13:14 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
13:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So here's a question I've been meaning to ask you ever since I read this book. There's a famous quote from from Ray Bradbury. When asked, I'm paraphrasing.
13:25 Speaker 01 I was afraid you were going to quote Woody Allen, too.
13:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No.
13:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When I'm paraphrasing, but when asked, why do you write such dystopian stories about our future? Is this what you think will happen to us? And he says, no, I write these stories so that you know to avoid them.
13:44 Speaker 02 Yes.
13:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so let me ask you, there are restorative forces in society that tell me that, I think, we will never land where dystopic storytellers tell us. You know, remember in in in Soylent Green? You know, we're eating. I mean, just just pick any any movie, any movie where there's a descent of humanity to some rock bottom. Aren't there forces that will restore it?
14:16 Speaker 02 Well, we hope so, and of course Ray Bradley is right that if we are aware of the bad things that can happen, that's a motivation to try and prevent them. And I think
14:24 Speaker 01 But historians might disagree because the whole time they're telling us about awful things that happened in the past and we're just like, all right, keep it down over there.
14:32 Speaker 02 The things that actually did happen in the past. Well, that's right, but I think there's a set of concerns which I highlight in my book about the downside of ever more powerful technology. And we're aware of two types of concern. One is the pressures we're putting on the human habitat by the growing population, more demanding of energy resources. So we're risking some tipping points that cause lots of extinctions and make the Possibly our own extinction. Possibly our own extinction, yeah. So that's one class. But the other type of threat is because even a few people are now empowered to create by error or by design
15:14 Speaker 02 a consequence that could cascade globally. We're familiar with what cyber attacks could do, and they're going to get more serious. And also similar concerns about misuse of biotech. And so those are two technologies which are getting very powerful. And in fact, in Cambridge, we've set up a group to study these issues because even though huge numbers of people are studying small risks like plane crashes, carcinogens in food, low radiation doses, et cetera, not very many people are thinking about these low probability but catastrophic consequence risks. And in our group in Cambridge, we feel that if we can reduce the probability of those by one part in a thousand, we've earned our keep because the stakes are so high.
15:59 Speaker 01 They must be the most fun people at a dinner party. When everyone's like, you know, I don't know if this chicken is cooked. And they're like, well, I can tell you there's something's coming for all of us. Don't worry about the chicken.
16:11 Speaker 02 Well, we can have to give good plots to these dystopian authors.
16:13 Speaker 01 Yes, totally.
16:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I see, so they should mine your deliberations and come up with stories for
16:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
16:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? For future movies.
16:22 Speaker 02 Yes, yes. And of course, we do plan these scenarios under university like Cambridge can convene experts to decide what is complete science fiction and what is a serious threat.
16:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because you have experts in all the different branches of human investigation.
16:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's right.
16:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That can weigh in.
16:39 Speaker 02 Yes, and I think they have an obligation to weigh in, in my opinion, because the experts are very often wrong, but they're more likely to be able to see a threat before the average person.
16:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And your single biggest threat that you think of is what? Single biggest?
16:53 Speaker 02 Well, in the short term, I worry about bio and cyber.
16:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh huh.
16:57 Speaker 02 Because I think they're going to make governance very difficult because there'll be the tension between privacy, liberty and security.
17:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
17:05 Speaker 02 Because...
17:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? An eternal tension, actually, yeah.
17:07 Speaker 02 But it's getting worse because, you know, I like to say the global village would have his village idiots and they would have a global range. So we can't be so benign and tolerant as they were in the past.
17:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The local village idiots can influence the wall, I mean, the world.
17:22 Speaker 01 The power that they're...
17:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
17:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow.
17:24 Speaker 01 They're not just like...
17:24 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, this is true, obviously, bio, cyber already, and I think with biotechnology being so widely dispersed, I mean, biohacking is even a student sport, then we have to worry about this.
17:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, it's a sport. It became a sport.
17:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, yes. And, you know, we say we can regulate these things, but regulating these techniques globally is as hopeless as regulating the drug laws globally or the tax laws globally. And not even the Americans have managed to do those.
17:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And your biggest concern fifty, hundred years out?
17:57 Speaker 02 Well, I worry then about the environmental effects. And of course, we don't know how powerful computers and AI will be then, and we've got to cope with that.
18:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. Well, we gotta take a break, and when we come back, we will take questions from our fanbase that are all directed on this very subject. And Maeve, you've got the question?
18:19 Speaker 01 I've got the question.
18:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I haven't seen him yet. Neither of us have seen him, but they're all going to him.
18:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
18:23 Speaker 01 Okay, get ready.
18:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When StarTalk returns.
18:26 Speaker 02 And I'll bluff my way.
18:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is actually a Cosmic Queries edition of StarTalk with our special guest, Sir Lord Martin Rees.
18:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back on StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition on the future, prospects for humanity, which happens to be the exact title of Sir Martin Rees's book, a longtime friend and colleague of mine in astrophysics from the University of Cambridge. And I've got with me as my co-host, Maeve.
18:59 Speaker 01 Yes.
19:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Maeve, you've got questions.
19:01 Speaker 01 I've got the questions.
19:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The question is, does he have the answers?
19:04 Speaker 01 Let's see.
19:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let's find out. Okay, who do we have?
19:07 Speaker 01 Okay, this comes from Facebook. Kato's Clover asks, "Do you think that one day we'll have a worldwide united science and/or space organization?"
19:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh, that's a good one.
19:18 Speaker 02 Well, of course, science is a sort of global culture. Protons and proteins are the same everywhere in the world, and so that's why science is valuable for straddling political divides and divides of faith. It can be uncommon. And of course, sometimes we have to work together because we need big bits of equipment. Telescopes are not funded by a single country, et cetera.
19:37 Speaker 01 So you're not taking turns to use telescopes in some cases?
19:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, we do.
19:41 Speaker 02 We do. We do.
19:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And we're very polite about it.
19:44 Speaker 01 You're not like, shove over.
19:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, we don't fight it on the line.
19:47 Speaker 02 But the Europeans are building the world's biggest telescope, 39-meter diameter, and we work together to fund that sort of thing. But I think also, the challenges of the application of science for health and energy and all that need to be tackled globally, as does climate change.
20:04 Speaker 01 Has there been a problem in the past, though, with scientists not sharing information? And the competitive nature?
20:10 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, I think obviously sometimes there's competition, to be first, but I think scientists are far more cooperative than most people. They share the culture, and they realize that it's a cumulative endeavor. Everyone adds their brick to a big structure, as it were.
20:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I think the lesson there is, scientists are human like everybody else.
20:30 Speaker 02 Yes.
20:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But at the end of the day, we serve a higher goal.
20:37 Speaker 01 You can't even say it with a straight face.
20:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, no, at the end of the day, either I'm right, or Sir Martin is wrong, or Sir Martin is right and I'm wrong, or we're both wrong.
20:48 Speaker 02 Yes.
20:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, and we both know that going into the conversation. And for so much dialogue in the world, there's conflict to the point of bloodshed, because opposite sides think they have the absolute truth.
21:00 Speaker 02 Yes, but that's partly because science deals with the external world, whereas sort of ethics and morality and politics are things where...
21:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And religion, yeah.
21:10 Speaker 02 Yep, yep, yep.
21:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right.
21:12 Speaker 01 And this one is from Facebook too, Tavas C. Alley. How do you think future generations will judge our actions regarding climate change?
21:22 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, at the moment, I think they have a lot to blame us for, because we realize that we've inherited a huge amount from earlier centuries, not just cathedrals and all that, but all our infrastructure from the last century or two. And the main concern is that when we have far more benefits than any previous generation, if we leave a depleted world for the future, that will be a terrible legacy. And that's a serious threat if in fact we don't address these questions soon.
21:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's an interesting point, because in the United States, one of the great legacies of the country were all the mega projects from the Work Project Administration.
22:02 Speaker 02 That's right.
22:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? WPA, period. The Hoover Dam, aqueducts, roads, there was just a huge movement to build an infrastructure for the country. We only recently, here in New York City, we only recently twinned our water pipes from the reservoirs up in the mountains. And we would say, oh, why are they breaking? They were made 100 years ago. They're 100 years old, oh my gosh.
22:30 Speaker 02 Yes, that's right, and I think more generally, even though our cosmic horizons in time are so much larger, our planning horizon has got too short. We don't plan ahead even 20 or 30 years.
22:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right, right.
22:43 Speaker 01 And so again, this is on climate, this is from Tim Shaw through Patreon. What kind of climate-
22:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Patreon, those are the people who actually pay.
22:51 Speaker 01 They are.
22:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, all right, go on.
22:53 Speaker 01 What kind of climate change influenced disaster will need to happen before the majority of the world takes serious action on climate change?
22:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's a good question.
23:00 Speaker 01 I'm optimistic that the human race possesses everything we need to find climate change effectively, but I'm pessimistic when I see the current trend, especially in politics.
23:08 Speaker 02 Yes, well, I'm pessimistic too, and I think the problem is that politicians think parochially in short term, whereas climate change has to be thought in terms of benefiting people in the long term and helping people in remote parts of the world. My personal view is that the only effective thing is not to have carbon taxes and things, but to accelerate research and development into all kinds of clean energy. That's a win-win situation, because the countries that develop it will have a huge market, and countries like India, which need more power, will then be able to afford to leapfrog to clean energy and not build coal-fired power stations. So I think to promote R and D in energy and things like batteries and storage and all that
23:53 Speaker 02 on a level closer to the level of research in defence and in health is the prime thing we should do.
23:59 Speaker 01 Oh, imagine if the US spent all the money they spend on defence on R and D for clean energy.
24:04 Speaker 02 Wouldn't that be great?
24:06 Speaker 01 Isn't that like billions of dollars?
24:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's trillions.
24:08 Speaker 01 Trillions?
24:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, I mean-
24:09 Speaker 01 That's more than billions.
24:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, trillions is-
24:12 Speaker 01 Trillions is more than billions, sir.
24:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, but that would be great, wouldn't it?
24:14 Speaker 01 Yeah. No good idea.
24:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, good.
24:17 Speaker 01 And so, there's so many questions about space travel. Everybody wants to get out of here.
24:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bring it, bring it on.
24:24 Speaker 01 So Gabby Matei, through Google Plus, in the near future, will space travel be possible for everybody?
24:32 Speaker 02 Well, not for everybody, but for a lot, but it's interesting. I'm old enough to remember the Apollo programme, and at that time I thought that 10 years afterwards there'd be footprints on Mars, but of course there weren't because the US government had spent 4% of its federal budget on the Apollo programme, and there was no motive, which was done for super- Rivalry reasons. Of course, we know what's happening now. My personal view is if I was an American, I wouldn't support NASA spending any money on manned spaceflight. That's because I think it should be left to these private companies.
25:09 Speaker 01 Women's spaceflight.
25:10 Speaker 02 Women's spaceflight, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. And it should be left to the private companies, like SpaceX and Blue Origin. And that's because they can take risks. The trouble with-
25:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Elon Musk blurted his book.
25:24 Speaker 02 Yep. Yep, yep, yeah. But the trouble is that NASA is a risk averse. I mean, this shuttle failed twice in 135 launches. Each was a national trauma. Whereas adventurers and test pilots are prepared to take higher risks than that. So I think the future lies in cut-price, high-risk ventures bankrolled by these private companies. And I hope very much that there will be a community of people like that living on Mars by the end of a century. But I disagree with Musk and with my late colleague Stephen Hawking in that I don't think mass emigration is ever going to happen, ever be sensible, because nowhere
26:05 Speaker 02 in the solar system is as clement as the top of Everest or the South Pole. And it's a dangerous illusion to think we can solve the Earth's problems by going to Mars. Dealing with climate change is hard, but it's a doddle compared to terraforming Mars.
26:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I agree 100%, and I'm publicly, I want to say that I'm opposed to mass migration, but I just, I don't mind if we all want to live on Mars, but we need to, I don't think people fully understand what that involves.
26:34 Speaker 01 It does seem crazy. It seems like if you mess up your, you know, your bedroom, then you move house.
26:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, so watch what happens. So if we're really going to ship a billion people to Mars, because something bad happened on Earth, because a lot of the argument, especially put forth by your eminent colleague, the late Stephen Hawking, the argument was, and you can see the argument, it makes a good headline, you want to be a multi-planet species in case something really bad happens on one of the planets, so your species can still propagate. I get that, but- If you want to ship a billion people to Mars to protect humans, terraform it in advance to do so, it seems to me, whatever it takes to terraform Mars-
27:14 Speaker 01 The resources-
27:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You could terraform Earth back into Earth if you had messed up all the-
27:21 Speaker 02 Yes, but I think it's all right. I mean, I think there will be these crazy pioneers on Mars.
27:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
27:26 Speaker 02 And rather than terraforming the planet, they will modify themselves to adapt, because by the end of a century, we'll have genetic modification techniques and cyborg techniques. So my view is that a post-human era will be pioneered by these people on Mars, because they've got every incentive to adapt themselves to a hostile environment, they're away from all the regulators, and so they will evolve into a different species very quickly.
27:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They're away from the biological regulators, so they can actually introduce biological variation suitable for the Martian environment.
28:00 Speaker 02 Yes, and maybe at that stage, they can download their brains into electronic form, etc. And that means that the species will have its descendants, who will be generated by those people on Mars.
28:13 Speaker 01 Oh man, if I downloaded my brain, it's so glitchy and anxiety-ridden. I don't know if we want to replicate that.
28:19 Speaker 02 No, that's a separate question.
28:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We'll deal with that in another show, man.
28:24 Speaker 02 Whether it's still be you.
28:26 Speaker 01 I don't know. Maybe me, but like just in silver body form.
28:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because all future people are dressed in silver.
28:33 Speaker 01 That's what I'm saying. Oh my god. Okay, more-
28:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Another one, what else you got?
28:37 Speaker 01 This one is from Chris Ryu. Fast forward a decade or a few decades, and imagine this permanent Mars colony that we were talking about. Assuming that NASA were the ones responsible, what changes do you think that that would mean to the role of NASA?
28:52 Speaker 02 Well, I think if NASA were responsible, we'd have to go on, but my line, which I discuss in my book on the future, is that the role of NASA will be just that of an airport rather than airline, as it were. In that they may provide some basic facilities, but it'll be the private companies that provide the spacecraft and take the people prepared to accept high risks. So I think NASA will be phased out, and it'll be public money not spent and private money spent.
29:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? As you may know, the FAA has recent legislation. I don't know if it's been fully voted on, but it's been, there's not much resistance to it where they will now be the shepherds of the future space launch sites, spaceports.
29:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
29:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you can propose to have a spaceport.
29:40 Speaker 02 Yes.
29:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And they would be responsible for checking the safety of it.
29:43 Speaker 02 Yes.
29:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The safety of the downrange launches, is there?
29:46 Speaker 02 Yes, yeah.
29:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Um, safety craft that we're like, so this is a first step.
29:50 Speaker 02 Yes.
29:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In precisely what you're saying.
29:51 Speaker 02 They shouldn't be too stringent because they should remember that some people are prepared to go on one-way tickets and people like Steve Fossett and these guys who go hang gliding in a simity, they take very high risks. And they ought to allow people like that to risk their own lives.
30:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We interviewed, we interviewed someone who was, who wanted to go on these one-way trips to Mars. We had him, we had him on our show. And I said, but what does your, like, wife think about this? She said, oh, she encouraged it.
30:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Have you thought this through?
30:21 Speaker 01 She's doing a GoFundMe, send it to Mars, come on.
30:24 Speaker 02 Well, Elon Musk said he wants to die on Mars but not on impact.
30:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, good, that's good, okay.
30:31 Speaker 01 Um, well, I think.
30:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, time for one more quick question.
30:33 Speaker 01 Okay, I think it might, we have answered Mark Fesco's question from Facebook where he asks, will companies such as SpaceX eventually make NASA obsolete?
30:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, but let me, let me give a counterargument there.
30:43 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
30:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Um, to do something first.
30:47 Speaker 02 Yes.
30:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's expensive and dangerous.
30:50 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
30:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Doesn't really come with a business model. That's a very short venture capitalist meeting.
30:55 Speaker 02 Yes.
30:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, so Elon, what are you doing? Put humans on Mars. How much will it cost? I don't know, a trillion dollars. Uh, is it dangerous? Yes. Will people die? Probably.
31:02 Speaker 02 Yes.
31:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What's the return on investment? Nothing.
31:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, so how do you do that first? I, I, my research of the history of this exercise.
31:10 Speaker 02 Yes.
31:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Says that governments do this first, and then they find the trade wins and the patents are, are ganted. And then private enterprise comes up behind that.
31:18 Speaker 02 But I'm saying you would never have that grandiose goal of sending a million people. You would just have a few pioneers who would go. I mean, the point is that s- space, it's, it's not like, you know, climate change where governments have to coordinate. It doesn't have to be everyone agreeing. It can be just one corporation doing it.
31:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And therefore, there's much greater freedom.
31:38 Speaker 02 Much greater freedom.
31:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Creativity and decision.
31:40 Speaker 02 Yes, and a greater capacity for accepting risks.
31:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Good point, because the FAA doesn't want people dying.
31:48 Speaker 02 No.
31:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so that might, so that might actually be a delaying force.
31:53 Speaker 02 Yep.
31:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Compared to what you're describing.
31:55 Speaker 02 Yes, that's right.
31:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So he wants, he wants the Wild West.
31:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Space exploration.
31:58 Speaker 01 All the, all the bad kids who smoke around the back of the school.
32:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
32:04 Speaker 01 The risk taker.
32:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The bad boys.
32:06 Speaker 02 Yes, yes.
32:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, we got to take our next break, and when we come back, more Cosmic Queries on the future of humanity with Sir Martin Rees and Mae Higgins when we return.
32:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back for our final segment, Cosmic Queries, The Future of Humanity, featuring the recent book by my friend and colleague, Sir Martin Rees, On the Future Prospects for Humanity. So let me just lead off, she's got her list of questions from our, from our people, but I'm just curious, is there, um, how important will science, I think I know the answer to this, but I want to hear it from you. How important will science literacy be going forward as science becomes so much more centered in decisions we have to make about our own fate?
33:01 Speaker 02 Well, I think it's crucially important that everyone should have a feel for science. That's why things like your outreach are so important, because so many of the decisions we have to take are on energy, health, environment, and you need to have some feel for science, not to be bamboozled by bad statistics and things like that. And so it's very important that everyone should have a feel for science, but also, it's part of our culture, isn't it? And, um, you know, everyone wants to know about our place in the universe, and of course, nothing fascinates kids more than dinosaurs, even though they're completely irrelevant. So.
33:39 Speaker 02 No, but it's important for educators.
33:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But you know what I tell you?
33:42 Speaker 02 You have to make things relevant.
33:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I win that argument. I said, one hour asteroids took out your dinosaurs.
33:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
33:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So we're done here.
33:49 Speaker 02 So dinosaurs in space are what fascinate kids.
33:51 Speaker 01 All of these eight-year-old children just weeping listening to the show.
33:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what else you got? This is our last segment, so make them good.
33:58 Speaker 01 Okay, are you ready? This is from J K Winn. He got onto us through Instagram and he asks, what's the next E equals M C squared, meaning what do you anticipate will next shake the foundations of physics on that level of wow factor?
34:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh, nice.
34:12 Speaker 02 Right. Well, of course, the biggest wow is now coming not from physics, but from biology, understanding the brain and the complications. And I like to say physics is the easy subject.
34:26 Speaker 02 Stars and atoms are far easier to understand than even an insect. So the big challenge is to understand life and the brain. But if you want to ask about physics, then the next big step is to unify the very large and the very small, to unify what Einstein did with the physics of atoms in the micro world, what's called quantum theory. And until we have that, we won't understand empty space in the bedrock sense. And we astronomers worry about something called dark energy, which is a force latent in empty space.
34:58 Speaker 01 I think my ex-boyfriend had that dark energy.
35:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
35:02 Speaker 01 I worried about that.
35:03 Speaker 02 But that's a big challenge for physics.
35:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is there some state of the universe that is on the brink of collapse and we don't know it?
35:11 Speaker 02 Well, if you don't know it, I can't answer your question. But.
35:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, you could be, we could be, we could be walking along the edge of some cliff, and the cliff is not visible to us until you step there and then everything collapses.
35:24 Speaker 02 Well, that's certainly possible. But another point, which I make in my, in my book on the future, is that there may be some important aspects of reality which our brains just can't cope with. I mean, a monkey can't understand quantum theory. And likewise, there may be deep issues which are just beyond our brains and have to await these post-humans. And they may, they may answer that sort of question.
35:48 Speaker 01 Do you mean like when some.
35:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's after they make us their pets.
35:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, yes.
35:52 Speaker 01 We're gonna be their pets.
35:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, that kid's not all that bad.
35:56 Speaker 01 No, we'll just be rescues. Um, but do you mean like we can't understand what's happening in front of our eyes, like something like, remember when some people saw ships for the first time, they just didn't see them because they didn't know what they were? That's what you mean?
36:09 Speaker 02 Yes.
36:09 Speaker 01 Yikes.
36:10 Speaker 02 And of course, that's relevant to aliens and SETI because they may be so different from us that we wouldn't recognize their manifestations.
36:19 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
36:22 Speaker 01 Okay, so this is about the Hadron Collider. Isn't there a part of the Large Hadron Collider that emits a magnetic field stronger than that of Earth? Why can't we somehow place something similar on our future spaceships? That's from Ramon Hamilton.
36:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, to protect us from, uh, from solar radiation.
36:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, yes.
36:41 Speaker 01 Is that?
36:42 Speaker 02 Well, maybe we can. People talk about, talk about that, but you need a so-called superconductor or you need power to maintain the magnetic field. But certainly, radiation damage is, uh, uh, an important constraint on manned spacecraft. And that's why, uh, Dennis Tito had the idea of sending people, uh, around Mars and back 500 days and his favorite crew, a middle-aged couple, to be cooped up for 500 days happily and to be old enough not to care about a radiation dose.
37:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To become sterile at the end.
37:13 Speaker 01 Oh, my God. And also a middle-aged couple, they're happy to sit in silence together for long periods of time.
37:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's right, that's right.
37:20 Speaker 01 It's perfect.
37:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So don't volunteer yet.
37:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, so, yeah, so this, that would, it's an interesting fact. And the point Sir Martin was making was that you, you, you know, every pound, every kilogram matters that you're sending into space. And so if you're going to have a system that creates a magnetic field around your ship, there's the weight of that versus the weight of what might just simply be shielding.
37:46 Speaker 02 Yes, a lot of lead, yeah.
37:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a good question. Yeah, what else, what else do you have?
37:51 Speaker 01 Um, given, this is from Matthew Belitho. Given that a particle's interaction with the Higgs field is what gives it its mass, is it conceivable that in future, when we understand this interaction more thoroughly, we could devise a machine by which we could completely nullify a spaceship and its contents' interaction with the Higgs field, rendering it completely massless? And therefore capable of light speed and beyond.
38:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Whoa, whoa.
38:15 Speaker 02 That's.
38:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just say yeah, just say yes.
38:16 Speaker 01 It's a yes or no question.
38:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just say yes.
38:18 Speaker 02 I, I think we don't know. I mean, I should say, we can't conceive of what might happen in our future.
38:23 Speaker 01 That's a very kind, that's a very kind answer.
38:26 Speaker 02 That, that, that needs a bigger brain than we've got.
38:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm so, I'm just gonna say yes to that.
38:30 Speaker 01 You're gonna say yes?
38:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, wait, except, uh, you have to watch out, of course, because for almost everything we've discussed, there's that off-ramp of the weaponization of that new technology.
38:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
38:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so you can imagine if you had control over the mass of something.
38:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
38:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And that became weaponized.
38:46 Speaker 01 Trouble maker.
38:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
38:47 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, one of the themes of my, my book on the future is that, uh, the stakes are getting high because every new invention has benefits and a downside, uh, but they're getting bigger.
38:59 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
38:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But the consequence, so a knife can, can cut your food or kill someone, but a knife can't kill a thousand people.
39:06 Speaker 02 Hmm, right.
39:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A thousand people will kill you before your knife kills a thousand people. But other kinds of weaponry, that equation is different.
39:13 Speaker 02 Yep, that's right. And there's a risk of error as well as, uh, design.
39:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right.
39:19 Speaker 01 Um, this one is about, uh, communicating, I think, with, with aliens. Timothy Colnan, um, has anybody thought to watch for coded patterns in starlight dips that could be used as communication? As if a very advanced civilization intentionally put large objects into orbit around a local star to create such an obvious message that distant intelligent observers would recognize it as a message. I could imagine our civilization attempting something like that in the future if we could.
39:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
39:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh.
39:46 Speaker 02 Well, of course, there, there was this object called Tabby's star, where people thought something might be happening. But it's primitive communication, rather like smoke signals.
39:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
39:55 Speaker 02 Uh, there, um, but I.
39:56 Speaker 01 Or crying statues.
39:57 Speaker 02 But, but my, my, my view is that if SETI search has detected anything.
40:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? SETI, search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
40:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. Um, if they detect something, it won't be anything like our civilization. It'll be some sort of machine created by some long-dead civilization. And it might be sending out some sort of transmission, but it's unlikely that it's a message we could decode. So I'm pessimistic about being able to decode a message.
40:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because if they're in any way smarter than us, their simplest thoughts will transcend our deepest thoughts.
40:27 Speaker 02 They might or they might not be interested in sending a message, but we might find evidence for something which is manifestly artificial, and that in itself would be, of course, a big breakthrough.
40:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And of course, you were around for the for the discovery of the pulsar, correct?
40:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, I was a student then, yes.
40:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're a student at University of Cambridge, and so Anthony Huish, I think it was, and
40:47 Speaker 02 Huish and Bell.
40:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And Jocelyn Bell. So they find a star that is that is blinking at us in radio waves.
40:54 Speaker 02 Yes.
40:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We don't have that word yet.
40:56 Speaker 01 Oh, oh.
40:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Excuse me. It's not invented yet.
40:59 Speaker 01 Oh, of course.
41:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, a star is.
41:01 Speaker 01 So you were just like, look at the blinking star.
41:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Look at the blinking, and it's keeping perfect time. Oh, my gosh. It might, and the the famous LGM, I think, was written on the page.
41:09 Speaker 02 Yep, that's right.
41:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Little green men, right?
41:12 Speaker 02 It was so different from anything that was known before.
41:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right, and that would be, that's an example of a signal. So so our our history in our field says, if you see a signal that is regular
41:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
41:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? and perfect, which is it is it just something we've yet to discover in nature that is regular and perfect?
41:31 Speaker 02 Yes.
41:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or is it intelligent aliens sending us a signal?
41:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
41:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And the history of this is that it's a new phenomenon in nature. It's not a it's not aliens, unfortunately, because we all want to meet the aliens.
41:41 Speaker 02 Yes.
41:42 Speaker 01 Wasn't it kind of, you know, when the humans spent it sent out the golden record, they had like instructions on the side of how to?
41:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How to decode it.
41:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
41:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What do you think what do you think of that? In fact, you were you were also blurted by Anne Druyan, who was the creative director
41:54 Speaker 02 Of course, yes. Worked with you, yes, yes.
41:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Of the record of the golden record on the side of Voyager.
41:59 Speaker 02 Yes, yes.
42:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So that just I'd be curious what your thoughts are. This is our attempt. People may remember.
42:04 Speaker 02 Yes, yes.
42:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On the side of, just Google it, the golden record, the pictograms on the side.
42:09 Speaker 02 Yes, yes.
42:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That, of course, is not written in English, but they're pictograms that are attempt to share our science with them.
42:17 Speaker 02 Yes. Well, I mean, I think it was a good exercise to do that, and I think there's a a plan for Anne to do a similar competition for schools to find something similar, which will to design something, and that's a great idea. But I think the chance of any aliens picking that up and decoding it is far smaller than them detecting sort of a Um, uh, radio and TV transmissions from the earth.
42:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That are already leaking from earth.
42:40 Speaker 02 They're already leaking, yeah. Um, and incidentally, there's some people.
42:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's that's emitting at a whole bubble.
42:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
42:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So wherever you are in any direction, you're going to receive this bubble, whereas otherwise, you gotta be right in line with the.
42:50 Speaker 01 With that little tiny little.
42:51 Speaker 02 And some people say we should beam some signal, and other people say we shouldn't do that, we should hide. And I can't take that seriously, because I think if they're more advanced than us, they probably know all about us, they're probably watching us already.
43:02 Speaker 01 You think they're not bothering with us?
43:04 Speaker 02 Yeah.
43:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, Martin, you you wouldn't give your email address to a stranger who is human in the street? Much less the return address of Earth to aliens in the universe. We saw those movies, we know what they'll do.
43:19 Speaker 02 No, but I think they they would know about us already.
43:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
43:22 Speaker 02 I think the the.
43:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So we're already a zoo for them, they already know all about us.
43:27 Speaker 02 They're watching us with interest.
43:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A planet of of interest, yes. All right, keep going.
43:32 Speaker 01 All right, so um, so this is from Instagram, the C word, as in S E A. This is from Instagram, is it more practical to research interdimensional travel rather than faster than light travel? More practical.
43:46 Speaker 02 Well, I I think neither is really practical in case of our present knowledge.
43:49 Speaker 01 Fun, do you think?
43:50 Speaker 02 Um, but uh, um, going sending things at the speed of light, of course, um, i- is okay if it's information. And of course, one of the ways of uh, of sending um, in- information um, across the galaxy will be to send a code for DNA or something like that, at the speed of light. Um, but of course.
44:09 Speaker 01 Like, it is your dad.
44:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, right, yeah, yeah, yes. But uh, uh, so I think tho- those are uh, probably beyond the science fiction fringe, although one should never say that, because we've no idea what will be done in the far future.
44:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We've got about two minutes left, I want to make sure we have, I I want to hear Martin's deepest sort of summative reflections.
44:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
44:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On where we are, where we've been, where we're headed. Martin, what can you do for us here?
44:38 Speaker 02 Well, in my book on the future, I emphasise that this century is very special. Because depending on what actions we take now, we can either leave a depleted world with mass extinctions and an unappealing climate, or we can trigger the transition to a spacefaring civilization where human evolution will be succeeded by a post-human era which could spread beyond the solar system, indeed through the entire galaxy. So the stakes are very high, and the concerns are not just about ourselves, our children and grandchildren, but about the long-term future of humanity and of post-human life.
45:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But when you think of post-human, why can't we just think of better humans? So we have access to the genome, now I get rid of disease, make you live twice as long. I maybe reduce the chemical inefficiencies in your body, so you don't have to eat as much. How about that?
45:34 Speaker 01 Or how about like humans that are already managing to do that, like indigenous communities who live in harmony with the with the earth?
45:41 Speaker 02 Well, there's one possibility, some people might like that, some people might...
45:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I wouldn't, no.
45:45 Speaker 02 No, no, no, some people might...
45:47 Speaker 01 You know, your iPhone.
45:48 Speaker 02 Of course, some people might prefer to download themselves into something electronic and be frozen until that era is reached.
45:57 Speaker 01 You'd rather do that than just like live in a city like Petra that's made out of sandstone, where you get to have running water and a beautiful life?
46:05 Speaker 02 Well, I think many people would, and I think they may not want to be more intelligent, because there was this attempt by, was it Shockley, to set up this sperm bank for Nobel Prize winners.
46:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He co-invented the transistor for Bell Telephone Labs.
46:21 Speaker 02 But then he went into interracial thoughts.
46:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, he said, yeah, let's breed another race. This is very eugenics.
46:29 Speaker 02 But it's gratifying that there was no demand.
46:33 Speaker 01 Good.
46:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, but the fun thing, Ray Kurzweil, he's a guy who thinks that machines will take over, and he wants to be frozen, his blood replaced by liquid nitrogen until that era.
46:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And then they bring him back and then he's in the mix.
46:47 Speaker 02 They bring him back, and I don't go along with this. I've told people who advocate this, I want to end my life in an English churchyard, not a California refrigerator.
47:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I love English people. So practical.
47:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I think we should end it on that note, I'm pretty sure. So, Sir Martin, it's a delight always to see you on the C-1 conferences, and when you present, and I always like tracking your books. So, thanks for coming to New York for this.
47:23 Speaker 02 Well, and thanks, Neil, and congratulations on all you're doing to spread enlightenment.
47:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, I can't wait till, like, other people are doing it, and then I just go to the Bahamas.
47:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Martin Lees's latest book, On the Future: Prospects for Humanity, and it's a fast read, but an important read, because the future of humanity lies in the brinks. And Maeve, good to have you, I haven't seen you in so long.
47:47 Speaker 01 Thank you. Yeah, great to see you.
47:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're busy, that's why I haven't seen you. You wrote a book, Maeve, in America. I love your observations of American culture.
47:52 Speaker 01 Thanks, Neil.
47:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's simultaneously embarrassing and hilarious.
47:55 Speaker 01 Thank you. Thanks for the chat.
47:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right. You've been watching, possibly, most likely, listening to this edition of StarTalk, The Future of Humanity, with my featured guest, Sir Martin Lees. I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and as always, I bid you to keep looking out.
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