We can no better imagine what will be happening on the moon 500 years from now than Columbus could imagine contemporary Manhattan.… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
In the 19th century, if you had a basement lab, you could make major scientific discoveries in your own home. Right? Because… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Virtually any pointed edifice is considered a candidate for alien engineering. After all, how could the Egyptians or Mayans have possibly stacked… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Admittedly, it would take industrial-grade chutzpah and a massive dose of malevolence for anyone to bulldoze the spot where Neil Armstrong stepped… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
We can never prove that we're alone in the universe. But the Allen Telescope Array could prove that we're not. — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Give consideration to the fact that alien astronomers could have scrutinized Earth for more than 4 billion years without detecting any radio… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Are we the only members of the Galaxy that can actually understand what a galaxy is? Could Homo sapiens really be the… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
The era during which only governments could put hardware on the Moon is coming to an end. There are 26 private teams… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Consider: The human genome consists of about 3.3 billion base pairs. Since there are only four types of pair, that amounts to… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Look, science is hard, it has a reputation of being hard, and the facts are, it is hard, and that's the result… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
The usual metric for whether a planet is habitable or not is to ascertain whether liquid water could exist on its surface.… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
The next time you check your moves in the mirror and reflect on how special you are, consider that somewhere in this… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Any society that could come here could pick up the lights from New York. What should we do about that? Should we… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Clearly, unless thinking beings inevitably wipe themselves out soon after developing technology, extraterrestrial intelligence could often be millions or billions of years… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Even if the Moon didn't exist - even if it had been vaporized billions of years ago by cantankerous Klingons - there… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
I think there's a lot of intelligence out there, but that's just my guess. Question is: Are they peaceable or hostile? You… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
We'll be 'outsourcing' our creativity and our thought processes to manufactured components that could be inconspicuously implanted beneath our coiffeurs. Welcome to… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Nine out of 10 Hollywood aliens look like us. Oh, sure, they might be short, big-eyed and hairless - decked out in… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
While human space travel is daunting, machines - with their indefinitely long lifetimes - could travel the galaxy. It might make little… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Five centuries ago, Copernicus upset humanity's applecart with the news that the Earth is not the center of the cosmos. It could… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
The strongest signals leaking off our planet are radar transmissions, not television or radio. The most powerful radars, such as the one… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Recent results from astronomers who study the occasional gravitational lensing of unknown worlds by intervening stars suggest that orphan planets could be… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
On Mars, where the air is spare - a hundred times less dense than on Earth - someone could hear you scream.… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Diminutive worlds are more likely to be rocky, and lapped by oceans and atmospheres. In the vernacular of 'Star Trek,' these would… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Consider that the overwhelming majority of those 40,000 near-Earth asteroids are small enough to fit on the parking lot at the mall.… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
If you could drive straight down, into a tunnel bored through the crust of the planet, you'd hit this molten mess in… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Explorers tend to be the aggressive types - why else would they risk scurvy, mutiny and other bad things to go out… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Studying Sol's interior by looking for analogous patterns on its incandescent face is known as helioseismology, an active - if largely unpronounceable - research… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Some pundits have proposed that the aliens have come here to breed with us. Apparently, too much bike riding or something similar has rendered… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
As far as I can tell, the only unambiguous consequence of the claimed invasion of Earth by beings from another star system has been… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Look, science is hard, it has a reputation of being hard, and the facts are, it is hard, and that's the result of 400… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Give consideration to the fact that alien astronomers could have scrutinized Earth for more than 4 billion years without detecting any radio signals, despite… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
In a movie, it's often important to have aliens whose gestures and facial expressions can be 'read' by humans. And in the days before… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Sure, nobody will make a fortune if we figure out why the Big Bang happened. But just about everyone would like to know. — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
If you could drive straight down, into a tunnel bored through the crust of the planet, you'd hit this molten mess in about an… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
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… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
I studied Latin in high school, and I was reading stuff from Cicero. And that signal took a few thousand years to get to… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
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… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
This plucky NASA telescope is able to find planets en masse. If you compare planet hunting to prospecting for gold, then Kepler is equivalent… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
