The Future of Us, with Sir Martin Rees

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. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/the-future-of-us-with-sir-martin-rees/ Photo Credit: StarTalk Radio

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:21Neil 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.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Hi, thank you. Oh, we're doing an elbow bump.

• 0:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An elbow, yeah.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  That's nice. Is that so that you don't get like my germs?

• 0:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You get elbow germs only.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  I keep my elbows so clean.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

• 0:46Neil 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.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  You did.

• 0:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Will you allow me to read the blurb?

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Please.

• 0:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm gonna read the blurb.

• 0:55Speaker 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.

• 1:02Neil 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.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Oh Neil, thank you.

• 1:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So good luck, good luck on that.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  Thank you. I'm green like an alien. Yeah.

• 1:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we all know aliens are green, yes.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  You heard it here first.

• 1:28Neil 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.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  I have a side hustle writing blurbs.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  How much did you pay to him to write your blurb?

• 2:05Neil 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?

• 2:20Neil 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.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  That was great. That makes people actually want to read the book.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it sounds incredible.

• 2:56Neil 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.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Proto Cambridge.

• 3:20Neil 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,

• 4:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  but I just want to thank you because what may have been little for you was big for me at the time.

• 4:09Speaker 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.

• 4:23Neil 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.

• 4:36Speaker 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.

• 4:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, it's just, it's, so, I'm just saying, they don't make them like him anymore.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  And you had a good book, and, but for you, the smaller your books are, the better they sell.

• 4:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, turns out, people don't like to read, I think, at the end of the day.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, your tweets, though.

• 4:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, so now it's in the, it's tweets.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  That's right, that's right.

• 5:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People read, you know, 200-character tweets.

• 5:04Speaker 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.

• 5:14Neil 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?

• 5:28Speaker 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.

• 5:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  And, so I have this just as a title, and...

• 5:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's only one Astronomer Royal?

• 5:44Speaker 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.

• 5:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We don't want that to happen too soon.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Also, I'm sure somebody else would like the role, you can take it with you to the afterlife.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yes.

• 6:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, so Astronomer Royal, that's so...

• 6:03Speaker 02

  But I, my day job is as a professor at Cambridge.

• 6:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And professor at Cambridge, so you were previously master at Trinity College.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:11Neil 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.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At University of Cambridge.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. And a member of the UK House of Lords, so I'm a bit of a politician too.

• 6:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got the member of the UK House of Lords and former president of the Royal Society.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Which is like your National Academy.

• 6:32Neil 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.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  I see, and the House of Lords is like.

• 6:49Neil 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.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Right, yes.

• 6:58Neil 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.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  She did the former.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  But then I got an upgrade to the House of Lords.

• 7:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay, so wait, so once you're knighted, then you are sir.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 7:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, now in the old days, that was, became hereditary, right? But is that not true anymore?

• 7:21Speaker 02

  That's not true. There was something called a baronet, which was hereditary, yeah.

• 7:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  But Lords were hereditary and they're not anymore.

• 7:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  You have to earn it.

• 7:29Speaker 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.

• 7:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, he's talking smack.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  So being in the House of Lords is a privilege but not an honor.

• 7:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice, oh, interesting distinction.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Yes, it is.

• 7:45Neil 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?

• 7:51Speaker 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.

• 8:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, so you're lord of that patch of land?

• 8:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, but they don't recognize me, it doesn't mean anything to me.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Can you just knock into any of the houses?

• 8:08Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Don't you know who I am?

• 8:13Speaker 02

  No rights there, but for historical reasons, you have to have a name of a place associated with you.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  I see. Well, thank you, thank you for not choosing Ireland.

• 8:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're Lord of Ludlow?

• 8:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, very cool. I like the alliteration there. This is not your-

• 8:29Speaker 02

  And that doesn't mean I'm a Luddite.

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, nice. Very good. Lord of Ludo, not a Luddite.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Not a Luddite.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  On his iPhone as we speak.

• 8:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is not your first rodeo. On the future, you've got our cosmic habitat. Just six numbers.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:47Neil 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.

• 9:05Speaker 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.

• 9:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We like fast food, fast.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  That's incredible. That's so dramatic.

• 9:23Speaker 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.

• 9:37Neil 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

• 9:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  accurate than a futurist might offer us in possibly writing the same titled book?

• 10:00Speaker 02

  Well, I don't recognize futurist as a real profession.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're so irritating.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Yes, I don't either. But, but, but obviously, I'm not-

• 10:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Depends on what they predict.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm not an astrologer. I have no crystal ball. So we can't make rabbi predictions.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Typical Gemini.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  There's some predictions, but all I would say is that I could do a better job than economists can do.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 10:26Neil 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?

• 10:33Speaker 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.

• 10:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, do we need you for that, though? I mean, come on now.

• 10:52Speaker 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.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  I definitely look to astrophysicists for future guidance because of the scope that you have.

• 11:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we do think in deep time. I mean, we think deep backwards and forwards.

• 11:35Speaker 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.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  And there's plenty of people here in America who are still.

• 11:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what he's saying.

• 11:53Speaker 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.

• 12:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mean colonizing other locations in space?

• 12:39Speaker 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.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  Like more than just hair transplant?

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:53Speaker 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.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 13:14Neil 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.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  I was afraid you were going to quote Woody Allen, too.

• 13:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 13:30Neil 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.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 13:45Neil 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?

• 14:16Speaker 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

• 14:24Speaker 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.

• 14:32Speaker 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

• 15:14Speaker 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.

• 15:59Speaker 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.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Well, we can have to give good plots to these dystopian authors.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Yes, totally.

• 16:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see, so they should mine your deliberations and come up with stories for

• 16:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For future movies.

• 16:22Speaker 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.

• 16:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you have experts in all the different branches of human investigation.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right.

• 16:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That can weigh in.

• 16:39Speaker 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.

• 16:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And your single biggest threat that you think of is what? Single biggest?

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Well, in the short term, I worry about bio and cyber.

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Because I think they're going to make governance very difficult because there'll be the tension between privacy, liberty and security.

• 17:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  Because...

• 17:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An eternal tension, actually, yeah.

• 17:07Speaker 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.

• 17:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The local village idiots can influence the wall, I mean, the world.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  The power that they're...

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  They're not just like...

• 17:24Speaker 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.

• 17:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it's a sport. It became a sport.

• 17:40Speaker 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.

• 17:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And your biggest concern fifty, hundred years out?

• 17:57Speaker 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.

• 18:09Neil 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?

• 18:19Speaker 01

  I've got the question.

• 18:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I haven't seen him yet. Neither of us have seen him, but they're all going to him.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Okay, get ready.

• 18:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When StarTalk returns.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  And I'll bluff my way.

• 18:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is actually a Cosmic Queries edition of StarTalk with our special guest, Sir Lord Martin Rees.

• 18:42Neil 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.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maeve, you've got questions.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  I've got the questions.

• 19:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The question is, does he have the answers?

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Let's see.

• 19:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out. Okay, who do we have?

• 19:07Speaker 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?"

• 19:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, that's a good one.

• 19:18Speaker 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.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  So you're not taking turns to use telescopes in some cases?

• 19:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we do.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  We do. We do.

• 19:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're very polite about it.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  You're not like, shove over.

• 19:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we don't fight it on the line.

• 19:47Speaker 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.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Has there been a problem in the past, though, with scientists not sharing information? And the competitive nature?

• 20:10Speaker 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.

• 20:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think the lesson there is, scientists are human like everybody else.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 20:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But at the end of the day, we serve a higher goal.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  You can't even say it with a straight face.

• 20:39Neil 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.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 20:49Neil 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.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  Yes, but that's partly because science deals with the external world, whereas sort of ethics and morality and politics are things where...

• 21:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And religion, yeah.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  Yep, yep, yep.

• 21:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  And this one is from Facebook too, Tavas C. Alley. How do you think future generations will judge our actions regarding climate change?

• 21:22Speaker 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.

• 21:53Neil 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.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 22:03Neil 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.

• 22:30Speaker 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.

• 22:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  And so again, this is on climate, this is from Tim Shaw through Patreon. What kind of climate-

• 22:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Patreon, those are the people who actually pay.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  They are.

• 22:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right, go on.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  What kind of climate change influenced disaster will need to happen before the majority of the world takes serious action on climate change?

• 22:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a good question.

• 23:00Speaker 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.

• 23:08Speaker 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

• 23:53Speaker 02

  on a level closer to the level of research in defence and in health is the prime thing we should do.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Oh, imagine if the US spent all the money they spend on defence on R and D for clean energy.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  Wouldn't that be great?

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Isn't that like billions of dollars?

• 24:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's trillions.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Trillions?

• 24:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I mean-

• 24:09Speaker 01

  That's more than billions.

• 24:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, trillions is-

• 24:12Speaker 01

  Trillions is more than billions, sir.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that would be great, wouldn't it?

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. No good idea.

• 24:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, good.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  And so, there's so many questions about space travel. Everybody wants to get out of here.

• 24:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bring it, bring it on.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  So Gabby Matei, through Google Plus, in the near future, will space travel be possible for everybody?

• 24:32Speaker 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.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Women's spaceflight.

• 25:10Speaker 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-

• 25:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Elon Musk blurted his book.

• 25:24Speaker 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

• 26:05Speaker 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.

• 26:20Neil 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.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  It does seem crazy. It seems like if you mess up your, you know, your bedroom, then you move house.

• 26:39Neil 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-

• 27:14Speaker 01

  The resources-

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could terraform Earth back into Earth if you had messed up all the-

• 27:21Speaker 02

  Yes, but I think it's all right. I mean, I think there will be these crazy pioneers on Mars.

• 27:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 27:26Speaker 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.

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're away from the biological regulators, so they can actually introduce biological variation suitable for the Martian environment.

• 28:00Speaker 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.

• 28:13Speaker 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.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  No, that's a separate question.

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll deal with that in another show, man.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Whether it's still be you.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  I don't know. Maybe me, but like just in silver body form.

• 28:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because all future people are dressed in silver.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  That's what I'm saying. Oh my god. Okay, more-

• 28:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Another one, what else you got?

• 28:37Speaker 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?

• 28:52Speaker 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.

• 29:22Neil 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.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you can propose to have a spaceport.

• 29:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they would be responsible for checking the safety of it.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The safety of the downrange launches, is there?

• 29:46Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah.

• 29:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, safety craft that we're like, so this is a first step.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In precisely what you're saying.

• 29:51Speaker 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.

• 30:06Neil 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.

• 30:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have you thought this through?

• 30:21Speaker 01

  She's doing a GoFundMe, send it to Mars, come on.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Well, Elon Musk said he wants to die on Mars but not on impact.

• 30:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, good, that's good, okay.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Um, well, I think.

• 30:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, time for one more quick question.

• 30:33Speaker 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?

• 30:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but let me, let me give a counterargument there.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, to do something first.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 30:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's expensive and dangerous.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doesn't really come with a business model. That's a very short venture capitalist meeting.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 30:55Neil 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.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 31:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's the return on investment? Nothing.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, so how do you do that first? I, I, my research of the history of this exercise.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 31:10Neil 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.

• 31:18Speaker 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.

• 31:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And therefore, there's much greater freedom.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  Much greater freedom.

• 31:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Creativity and decision.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  Yes, and a greater capacity for accepting risks.

• 31:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good point, because the FAA doesn't want people dying.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  No.

• 31:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so that might, so that might actually be a delaying force.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 31:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Compared to what you're describing.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  Yes, that's right.

• 31:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he wants, he wants the Wild West.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Space exploration.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  All the, all the bad kids who smoke around the back of the school.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  The risk taker.

• 32:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The bad boys.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 32:07Neil 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.

• 32:24Neil 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?

• 33:01Speaker 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.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  No, but it's important for educators.

• 33:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you know what I tell you?

• 33:42Speaker 02

  You have to make things relevant.

• 33:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I win that argument. I said, one hour asteroids took out your dinosaurs.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we're done here.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  So dinosaurs in space are what fascinate kids.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  All of these eight-year-old children just weeping listening to the show.

• 33:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what else you got? This is our last segment, so make them good.

• 33:58Speaker 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?

• 34:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, nice.

• 34:12Speaker 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.

• 34:26Speaker 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.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  I think my ex-boyfriend had that dark energy.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  I worried about that.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  But that's a big challenge for physics.

• 35:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is there some state of the universe that is on the brink of collapse and we don't know it?

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Well, if you don't know it, I can't answer your question. But.

• 35:15Neil 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.

• 35:24Speaker 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.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  Do you mean like when some.

• 35:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's after they make us their pets.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yes.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  We're gonna be their pets.

• 35:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that kid's not all that bad.

• 35:56Speaker 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?

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  Yikes.

• 36:10Speaker 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.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 36:22Speaker 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.

• 36:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, to protect us from, uh, from solar radiation.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yes.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  Is that?

• 36:42Speaker 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.

• 37:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To become sterile at the end.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. And also a middle-aged couple, they're happy to sit in silence together for long periods of time.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right, that's right.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  It's perfect.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So don't volunteer yet.

• 37:25Neil 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.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  Yes, a lot of lead, yeah.

• 37:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a good question. Yeah, what else, what else do you have?

• 37:51Speaker 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.

• 38:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa, whoa.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  That's.

• 38:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just say yeah, just say yes.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  It's a yes or no question.

• 38:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just say yes.

• 38:18Speaker 02

  I, I think we don't know. I mean, I should say, we can't conceive of what might happen in our future.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  That's a very kind, that's a very kind answer.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  That, that, that needs a bigger brain than we've got.

• 38:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm so, I'm just gonna say yes to that.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  You're gonna say yes?

• 38:30Neil 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.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so you can imagine if you had control over the mass of something.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that became weaponized.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Trouble maker.

• 38:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 38:47Speaker 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.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:59Neil 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.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Hmm, right.

• 39:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A thousand people will kill you before your knife kills a thousand people. But other kinds of weaponry, that equation is different.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  Yep, that's right. And there's a risk of error as well as, uh, design.

• 39:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 39:19Speaker 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.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 39:46Speaker 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.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  Uh, there, um, but I.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  Or crying statues.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  But, but my, my, my view is that if SETI search has detected anything.

• 40:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  SETI, search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

• 40:02Speaker 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.

• 40:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because if they're in any way smarter than us, their simplest thoughts will transcend our deepest thoughts.

• 40:27Speaker 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.

• 40:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And of course, you were around for the for the discovery of the pulsar, correct?

• 40:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was a student then, yes.

• 40:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a student at University of Cambridge, and so Anthony Huish, I think it was, and

• 40:47Speaker 02

  Huish and Bell.

• 40:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Jocelyn Bell. So they find a star that is that is blinking at us in radio waves.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 40:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We don't have that word yet.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  Oh, oh.

• 40:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excuse me. It's not invented yet.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Oh, of course.

• 41:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, a star is.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  So you were just like, look at the blinking star.

• 41:02Neil 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.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  Yep, that's right.

• 41:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Little green men, right?

• 41:12Speaker 02

  It was so different from anything that was known before.

• 41:14Neil 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

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  and perfect, which is it is it just something we've yet to discover in nature that is regular and perfect?

• 41:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or is it intelligent aliens sending us a signal?

• 41:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:34Neil 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.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:42Speaker 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?

• 41:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How to decode it.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:49Neil 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

• 41:54Speaker 02

  Of course, yes. Worked with you, yes, yes.

• 41:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of the record of the golden record on the side of Voyager.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 42:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that just I'd be curious what your thoughts are. This is our attempt. People may remember.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 42:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the side of, just Google it, the golden record, the pictograms on the side.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 42:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That, of course, is not written in English, but they're pictograms that are attempt to share our science with them.

• 42:17Speaker 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.

• 42:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That are already leaking from earth.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  They're already leaking, yeah. Um, and incidentally, there's some people.

• 42:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's that's emitting at a whole bubble.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:45Neil 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.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  With that little tiny little.

• 42:51Speaker 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.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  You think they're not bothering with us?

• 43:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:04Neil 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.

• 43:19Speaker 02

  No, but I think they they would know about us already.

• 43:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 43:22Speaker 02

  I think the the.

• 43:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we're already a zoo for them, they already know all about us.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  They're watching us with interest.

• 43:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A planet of of interest, yes. All right, keep going.

• 43:32Speaker 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.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  Well, I I think neither is really practical in case of our present knowledge.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  Fun, do you think?

• 43:50Speaker 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.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Like, it is your dad.

• 44:10Speaker 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.

• 44:22Neil 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.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On where we are, where we've been, where we're headed. Martin, what can you do for us here?

• 44:38Speaker 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.

• 45:18Neil 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?

• 45:34Speaker 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?

• 45:41Speaker 02

  Well, there's one possibility, some people might like that, some people might...

• 45:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I wouldn't, no.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  No, no, no, some people might...

• 45:47Speaker 01

  You know, your iPhone.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  Of course, some people might prefer to download themselves into something electronic and be frozen until that era is reached.

• 45:57Speaker 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?

• 46:05Speaker 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.

• 46:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He co-invented the transistor for Bell Telephone Labs.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  But then he went into interracial thoughts.

• 46:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he said, yeah, let's breed another race. This is very eugenics.

• 46:29Speaker 02

  But it's gratifying that there was no demand.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  Good.

• 46:34Speaker 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.

• 46:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then they bring him back and then he's in the mix.

• 46:47Speaker 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.

• 47:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love English people. So practical.

• 47:09Neil 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.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  Well, and thanks, Neil, and congratulations on all you're doing to spread enlightenment.

• 47:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I can't wait till, like, other people are doing it, and then I just go to the Bahamas.

• 47:33Neil 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.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  Thank you. Yeah, great to see you.

• 47:48Neil 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.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Thanks, Neil.

• 47:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's simultaneously embarrassing and hilarious.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thanks for the chat.

• 47:57Neil 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.