JOLLY DAYS

Martin Rees

This talk by astronomer Martin Rees succeeds in its effort to offer a cosmic perspective: an “awareness of the immense future”. Rees says we are at the beginning of the emergence of complexity, the science of which is “the greatest challenge of all”; which could lead in six billion years to creatures as unlike ourselves as we are distinct from bacteria.

In this 18 minute talk, Rees with his sharply chiseled features, looks like an old wizard hunched over his podium. Rees champions the “wisdom of Einstein”, which he describes as “humane, global and far seeing”.