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
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
The mission of NASA's Kepler telescope is to lift the scales from our eyes and reveal to us just how typical our… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
The overwhelming bulk of the cosmos is deathly quiet. But here and there - on worlds where matter is thick and conditions… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
The math is dead simple: it seems that the frequency of planets able to support life is roughly one percent. In other… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
The bottom line is, like, one in five stars has at least one planet where life might spring up. That's a fantastically… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
The cosmos is three times as old as Earth. During most of creation's 14 billion year history, our solar system wasn't around.… — 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
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
