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Comment and Space

'This century is special': Martin Rees on the vast span of time

Cosmology has transformed our understanding of time past and the aeons to come, pointing to a deep future in which life may morph into incredible forms, says Astronomer Royal Martin Rees

By Martin Rees

5 January 2024

Martin Rees - Astronomer Royal

Martin Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, British cosmologist and astrophysicist.

DAVID LEVENSON/Getty Images

IN OUR everyday lives, time is a precious commodity. We can gain it or lose it. We can save, spend or waste it. If our crimes are revealed, we risk doing time.

But it is, of course, something we can measure. Indeed, clocks have, over the centuries, been the high-tech artefacts of their era – the water clock, the pendulum clock, Harrison’s chronometer, all the way up to the incredible precision of atomic clocks.

Before there was a reliable calendar of months and seasons, the past was…

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