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Noted Astronomer Envisions Cyborgs on Mars


Martin Rees

When astronomer Sir Martin Rees, Templeton Prize winner (2011), thinks of the future, he thinks of cyborgs living on Mars, a topic he develops in his new book, On the Future. As he told  NBC’s Denise Chow in an interview in New York,


He thinks of this predicted development as “secular intelligent design.”

Denise Chow: If that happens, would we still be considered human?




Rees, who is former president of the Royal Society, goes further, however. He also predicts in his book that “a physics experiment could swallow up the entire universe.” When he received the Templeton Prize in 2011, he was noted for speculating that we could be living in a giant computer simulation. In 2017, he suggested that our universe may be lost in an “unbounded cosmic archipelago,” a multiverse where “we could all have avatars.” As for universes, “Ours would belong to the unusual subset where there was a “lucky draw” of cosmic numbers conducive to the emergence of complexity and consciousness. Its seemingly designed or fine-tuned features wouldn’t be surprising.”

The only type of universe we do not seem to be living in, on that view, is the simpler one we observe, about which we have at least some information.

In his 2003 book, Our Final Hour, Sir Martin gave humanity about a 50-50 chance of surviving the 21st century, due to “terror, error, and environmental disaster.” Asked by Chow how that was coming, he replied, “Well, we survived 18 years so far, but I do think we will have a bumpy ride through the century. I think it’s unlikely we’ll wipe ourselves out, but I do feel that there are all kinds of threats which we are in denial about and aren’t doing enough about.”

So, at least in this universe, assuming that the aliens operating the computer sim are not deceiving us and our AI masters are prepared to show mercy, the threats from terror, error, and environmental disaster have been downgraded significantly from 50-50 annihilation to a “bumpy ride.”

Fellow Earthlings, the information outlined above certainly helps us estimate how seriously we should take the threats.

See also: AI machines taking over the world? It’s a cool apocalypse but does that make it more likely?



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Noted Astronomer Envisions Cyborgs on Mars