Unusual Naivete by Nobel Laureate Michel Mayor

Well, perhaps I'm being too strong in my title, but, to have the 2019 Nobel laureate Michel Mayor say that we will never live on another planet is astonishingly silly and naive. In a recent article with the Agence France-Presse, Mayor notes that we need to kill the idea that humans migrating to exoplanets will ever happen. "If we are talking about exoplanets, things should be clear: We will not migrate there" Mayor noted. Perhaps he was attempting to focus on fixing things on Earth without dreaming of migrations to other exoplanets, but he seems to be strong on "never" in his statements.

Note, however, he's referring to a full migration if things get bad enough on Earth, but his rationale for that statement is focused on the time it would take to get to any exoplanet. While I might agree that a full migration might be more problematic and a more reasonable statement, the reason why is flawed in my view.

Probably what distresses me the most about his statement on traveling to exoplanets is just how many revolutions in science have occurred  and what theoretical physics is saying about the possibilities of manipulating space-time to travel to other stellar systems in the galaxy. Also, history has proven naysayers wrong more often than not (just look at this list just for a more popular view).

Don't get me wrong - I think Mayor and Queloz's Nobel was well deserved for the first exoplanet discovery. However, Mayor clearly jumped in the history of science naysayer list of something 'that will never happen' which demonstrates a significant lack of scientific vision.

As Lord Kelvin noted in 1895, "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible" QED.