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What about starting a PhD at 45 ? I mean, just for the fun of being a student again, the fun of working on your own little project . Does it open possibilities, in the sense of a career reboot ? (I'm totally OK with earning much less money than I do right now)

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it will definitely be fun, both being a student + working on your own project.

From my experience, for some reason PhD advisors tend to work well/really like mature students. No hard data on this, just an empirical observation across 3-4 labs I've worked in before I left academia.

With regards to career prospects (outside academia ofc), you definitely gain respect but anything more than that largely depends on your area of research. Which one is it, if I may ask?

I'm looking at anything involving computational geometry; and if I have spare time, ethics :-)

Find the right advisor and anything is possible. Remember tho, that the department and the research community to which you will belong will also have a considerable say in if you are allowed to progress.

Have you considered bootstrapping the field of computation ethics ;)

I guess it already exists a bit (Asimov's laws or robotics ?) but I'm afraid no one is interested.

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