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" Sure, our three-pound brains might be inadequate to understand the universe. But perhaps they're just good enough to build something that can. "
Seth Shostak
Just
Enough
Good
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" The longtime standard for American TV was 525 lines from top to bottom of the image. As a practical matter, that was roughly equivalent to 350 thousand pixels - pretty crude, given that photos made with your iPhone boast five million pixels. "
Seth Shostak
American
Image
iPhone
" While it may be disappointing, I have to confess to people who ask for my insights on the meaning of it all that astronomy doesn't provide any clearly useful data on matters of sin and souls. "
Seth Shostak
Data
Sin
People
" We haven't yet found a speck of evidence for biology on another world, so we have no objective way to judge whether life is a onetime fluke or a near-inevitable phenomenon. "
Seth Shostak
Judge
Biology
Life Is A
" 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
" Any society that could come here could pick up the lights from New York. What should we do about that? Should we darken New York from now until the last human expires? Would we want to turn off all the radars at JFK airport? "
Seth Shostak
Lights
Want
Airport
" 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
" 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
" The space elevator's not just another competitive technology, promoted by people who simply like the idea of diminishing the luster of the thrusters. It would open wide the doors to space. "
Seth Shostak
Doors
Open
People
" 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
" The bottom line is, like, one in five stars has at least one planet where life might spring up. That's a fantastically large percentage. That means in our galaxy, there's on the order of tens of billions of Earth-like worlds. "
Seth Shostak
Like
Life
Galaxy
" The total number of people that do a job that has the same description as mine in the entire world is fewer than 10. There's a lot of effort looking for life in space - that's a lot of what NASA does, but they're not necessarily looking for the kind of life that can hold up its side of a conversation. "
Seth Shostak
Life
Effort
Job
" Five centuries from now - barring unimaginable catastrophe - the moon will be developed real estate. There's economic incentive to exploit the moon - the helium-3 will be useful in powering fusion reactors, and the rare earth elements could supplant the limited terrestrial supply of these materials. "
Seth Shostak
Now
Real
Real Estate
" Data from orbiting telescopes like NASA's Kepler Mission hint that the tally of habitable planets in our galaxy is many billion. If E.T.'s not out there, then Earth is more than merely special - it's some sort of miracle. "
Seth Shostak
Earth
Mission
Galaxy
" The bottom line is that the position of the Sun relative to the stars slowly changes for any given date, and over the course of 26,000 years, it can easily slide between constellations. So you may think you're a Pisces, but you're actually an Aquarius. "
Seth Shostak
Stars
Sun
You
" It's hardly a secret that I'm skeptical of declarations that the aliens are out and about on our planet. Still, I try to answer every one of these mails and phone calls because, after all, it's not a violation of physics to travel from one star system to another. "
Seth Shostak
Travel
Star
Physics
" Diminutive worlds are more likely to be rocky, and lapped by oceans and atmospheres. In the vernacular of 'Star Trek,' these would be M-class planets: life-friendly oases where biology could begin and bumpy-faced Klingons might exist. "
Seth Shostak
Planets
Begin
Biology
" Give consideration to the fact that alien astronomers could have scrutinized Earth for more than 4 billion years without detecting any radio signals, despite the fact that our world is the poster child for habitability. "
Seth Shostak
World
Child
Earth
" In 1908, there was a persuasive demonstration of the power of high-speed, low-mass asteroids in rural Siberia. The Tunguska impactor iced millions of pine trees and about a zillion mosquitoes - and was no larger than an office building. "
Seth Shostak
Office
Trees
Building
" Humans have existed only for the last 0.001 percent of cosmic time. All of which says that - unless the Homo sapiens brain is the one-and-only instance of cogitating machinery - nearly all the intelligence that's out there is beyond our level. And that intelligence is more than just a little bit beyond. "
Seth Shostak
Intelligence
Beyond
Brain
" Imagine if the dinosaurs had tried picturing the rulers of their planet 100 million years hence. They'd undoubtedly envision these creatures as... dinosaurs! Conceiving of aliens as polished versions of ourselves is appealing, but unconvincing. "
Seth Shostak
Imagine
Planet
Tried
" '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
" Engineers are now experimenting with 4,096-line TV systems, suggesting that with the next generation of sets you'll be able to count the grass blades on the Superbowl field, an obvious lifestyle improvement. "
Seth Shostak
Now
Generation
Grass
" Despite tantalizing suggestions of fossilized microbes in meteorites, puzzling and possibly biogenic methane gas in the martian atmosphere, and a long-standing controversy over the Viking lander experiments of nearly 40 years ago, there's still no Exhibit A that points unequivocally to biology in our own back yard. "
Seth Shostak
Back
Gas
Biology
" Once typecast as the indispensable altarpiece of a well-appointed living room, TVs have infected every human environment. The average American household has more television sets than people. "
Seth Shostak
People
Living
Environment
" There's no doubt that the Moon is more than a handy night light and a hair restorer for werewolves. It's responsible for the substantial amplitude of earthly ocean tides. These are of obvious influence if you're a geoduck, a type of clam that people dig up at low tide. "
Seth Shostak
Night
Ocean
Moon
" About the only things that are unique to Earth are our biota and our culture. If aliens ever come here, they'd most likely be either biologists or music fans. Neither one has much reason to antagonize our armed forces. "
Seth Shostak
Music
Culture
Earth
" Plate tectonics is not all havoc and destruction. The slow movement of continents and ocean floors recycles carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans back into the atmosphere. Without this slow speed carbon cycle, Earth's temperatures would cool dozens of degrees below your comfort zone. "
Seth Shostak
Speed
Comfort Zone
Cool
" 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
Yourself
Work
" 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
" Consider: The human genome consists of about 3.3 billion base pairs. Since there are only four types of pair, that amounts to 0.8 gigabytes of information, or about what you can fit on a CD. With a microwave radio transmitter, you could beam that amount of information into space in a few minutes, and have it travel to anyone at light speed. "
Seth Shostak
Light
You
Travel