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" Certainly the history of astronomy shows that every time we thought we were special, we were wrong. "
Seth Shostak
Special
Wrong
Time
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" Estimates are that at least 70 per cent of all stars are accompanied by planets, and since the latter can occur in systems rather than as individuals (think of our own solar system), the number of planets in the Milky Way galaxy is of order one trillion. "
Seth Shostak
Way
Galaxy
Own
" I studied Latin in high school, and I was reading stuff from Cicero. And that signal took a few thousand years to get to me. But I was still interested in what he had to say. "
Seth Shostak
Say
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" The fact that we can't easily foresee clues that would betray an intelligence a million millennia farther down the road suggests that we're like ants trying to discover humans. Ask yourself: Would ants ever recognize houses, cars, or fire hydrants as the work of advanced biology? "
Seth Shostak
Fire
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Work
" While I have always thought that the motivation for looking for E.T. was both self-evident and patently worthy, it's possible that I'm a victim of my own job description. Others don't inevitably agree. Some will opine that there are better ways to spend the money. "
Seth Shostak
Looking
Thought
Motivation
" Ever since the infamous quiz show scandals of the 1950s, the feds had insisted that TV game shows be honest - or that at least they didn't cheat. So as a 'Dating Game' bachelor, I didn't know what I was going to be asked. The other bachelors and I were required to concoct our answers in real time. "
Seth Shostak
Honest
Know
Real
" When I was a kid, which was just after Edison invented moving pictures, there were films that involved aliens coming to Earth for bad purposes. "
Seth Shostak
Kid
Just
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" The split between religion and science is relatively new. Isaac Newton, who first worked out the laws by which gravity held the planets and even the stars in their traces, was sufficiently impressed by the scale and regularity of the universe to ascribe it all to God. "
Seth Shostak
Science
Universe
Stars
" While human space travel is daunting, machines - with their indefinitely long lifetimes - could travel the galaxy. It might make little difference to them that bridging the distance from one star to the next could take hundreds of thousands of years or more. "
Seth Shostak
Space
Travel
Long
" 'What was there before the Big Bang?' That's a question that both kids and adults love to pose to anyone who seems sympathetic. After all, if the universe has only been around for roughly 14 billion years, isn't it legitimate to ask what was in existence before the mother-of-all-events cranked up the cosmos? "
Seth Shostak
Pose
Years
Universe
" There will be an end point to how good TV pictures can get. The boob tube has hugely benefited from the rapid advance of digital electronics. Consequently, the strategy for hardware has changed. In the old days, sets had to be as simple as Elmer Fudd to keep them inexpensive. All the technical 'smarts' were at the transmitter end. "
Seth Shostak
Simple
Strategy
End
" Recent results from astronomers who study the occasional gravitational lensing of unknown worlds by intervening stars suggest that orphan planets could be at least as numerous as the stars. In other words, there could be hundreds of billions of orphan worlds shuffling through our galaxy. "
Seth Shostak
Results
Stars
Galaxy
" Forecasting Armageddon has become trendy of late, with a great deal of attention being given to an interpretation of the Mayan Calendar suggesting that Mother Earth is destined for doom in December of 2012. "
Seth Shostak
Mother
Attention
Great
" What's a space elevator? Simply described, it's a thin ribbon, about 3 feet wide and 60 thousand miles long, stretching upwards from the surface of the Earth. The lower end is bolted to a heavy anchor (think of an oil drilling platform), and the top is capped with a counterweight. "
Seth Shostak
End
Earth
Space
" The cosmos is three times as old as Earth. During most of creation's 14 billion year history, our solar system wasn't around. Nonetheless, the early universe still had the right stuff for life, and contained worlds that were just as suitable for spawning biology and intelligence as our own. "
Seth Shostak
Intelligence
History
Life
" In general, when moviemakers talk to scientists, they usually see them as a resource to solve particular technical problems or script problems for them. So, something like: what sort of weaponry would aliens be able to wield? "
Seth Shostak
Talk
Resource
Problems
" A practical way to travel between the stars is a must-have for space opera, and a sine qua non for our frequently vaunted future as a galactic society. "
Seth Shostak
Society
Space
Stars
" Of course there is still unexplored terrestrial territory, but most of it is waterlogged. Submersed secret places, such as the Challenger Deep, which today lure hi-tech adventurers like Richard Branson and James Cameron, will undoubtedly provide welcome fodder for 'National Geographic.' "
Seth Shostak
Places
Deep
Like
" Today's voguish threats, including climate change, population growth, massive war, and resource depletion, are all amenable to a fix if we act prudently. And even if we don't, these problems are incapable of obliterating all of humanity, let alone destroying the Earth. No, the real End of Days will happen slowly, as the Sun ages. "
Seth Shostak
Alone
Growth
Sun
" It will be the mother of all telescopes, and you can bet it will do for astronomy what genome sequencing is doing for biology. The clumsy, if utilitarian, name of this mirrored monster is Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, or LSST. You can't use it yet, but a peak in the Chilean Andes has been decapitated to provide a level spot for placement. "
Seth Shostak
Doing
Biology
Mother
" Disasters happen. We still have no way to eliminate earthquakes, wildfires, hurricanes, floods or droughts. We cope as best we can by fortifying ourselves against danger with building codes and levees, and by setting aside money to clean up afterwards. "
Seth Shostak
Way
Best
Building
" I actually think the chances that we'll find E.T. are pretty good. "
Seth Shostak
Think
Find
Pretty
" Thanks to the fact that the Earth isn't a perfect sphere, and invoking a bunch of Newtonian physics, you can deduce that our planet wobbles, too, taking roughly 26,000 years to trace out a small circle on the sky, a phenomenon known as precession. "
Seth Shostak
Sky
Perfect
Earth
" Junk, redundancy, and inefficiency characterize astrophysical signals. It seems they characterize cells and sea lions, too. These biological constructions have lots of superfluous and redundant parts, and are a long way from being optimally built or operated. "
Seth Shostak
Way
Sea
Long Way
" If this is the only planet on which not only life, but intelligent life, has arisen, that would be very unusual. "
Seth Shostak
Only
Unusual
Intelligent
" I still remember my dismay in the summer of 2007 when - for the first time in the history of planet Earth - America's share of auto production dropped below 50 percent. "
Seth Shostak
Remember
Earth
Time
" We'll be 'outsourcing' our creativity and our thought processes to manufactured components that could be inconspicuously implanted beneath our coiffeurs. Welcome to the Borg. You might not be entirely comfortable with such cybernetic enhancements, but all the smart money says it's going to happen. "
Seth Shostak
Money
Welcome
You
" Frankly, I'll believe in horoscopes the day I can describe my personality to an astrologer and they tell me what date I was born. "
Seth Shostak
Personality
Day
Born
" Everything you see is filtered through your visual system (imperfect) and your brain (also imperfect, despite what your mom told you). Witness testimony is the worst kind of evidence in science. "
Seth Shostak
Mom
Kind
Evidence
" Star Trek's genial premise is that the cosmos is flush with intelligent species, and our descendants will interact with them face-to-face, thanks to warp drive and some winsome space cadets. "
Seth Shostak
Star
Thanks
Space
" Very few societies on Earth developed science as we know it today. On the other hand, the number is not zero - the Greeks, the Chinese, and the Maya did, among others. Once invented, science proved so useful that it spread like mold on a petri dish. "
Seth Shostak
Others
Science
Earth