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
I studied Latin in high school, and I was reading stuff from Cicero. And that signal took a few thousand years to… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
The Earth has been lawned with life for something over 3.5 billion years. That's a span of time great enough to encompass… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Despite tantalizing suggestions of fossilized microbes in meteorites, puzzling and possibly biogenic methane gas in the martian atmosphere, and a long-standing controversy… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Consider: Life arose on Earth close to four billion years ago. Four billion years of slithering, swimming, and soaring life forms. But… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Charles Darwin sailed around the world for two years on the 'Beagle,' and he had quite a bit of interest in things… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Faith is a personal matter, and should never be a cudgel to stifle inquiry. We tried that approach about 1,200 years ago.… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
In the four years since its launch, Kepler has chalked up 122 new and confirmed planets. It's also caught the scent of… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
There is little chance that aliens from two societies anywhere in the Galaxy will be culturally close enough to really 'get along.'… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Every day, the temperature of Sol's surface increases by five billionths of a degree, a change of no consequence for thousands of… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
'What was there before the Big Bang?' That's a question that both kids and adults love to pose to anyone who seems… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
The Moon is a ball of left-over debris from a cosmic collision that took place more than four billion years ago. A… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Our brains are continuing to evolve, and perhaps a few tens of thousands of years from now, our descendants will walk around… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Our computers double in capability on time scales of only a few years. It's hardly outrageous to believe that we will successfully… — 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
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
Thanks to the fact that the Earth isn't a perfect sphere, and invoking a bunch of Newtonian physics, you can deduce that… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
The bottom line is that the position of the Sun relative to the stars slowly changes for any given date, and over… — 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
Mountains aren't eternal: even the most imposing massifs are smoothed away by weathering in a few hundred million years or less. Plate… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
We're hard-wired by 200,000 years of evolution to be sensitive to the idea that someone might be watching us. They might be… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Our retinas and brains have been wired by a hundred million years of evolution to find outlines in a visually complex landscape.… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
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
The stars look the same from night to night. Nebulae and galaxies are dully immutable, maintaining the same overall appearance for thousands… — Seth Shostak Copy Share Image
Imagine if the dinosaurs had tried picturing the rulers of their planet 100 million years hence. They'd undoubtedly envision these creatures as...… — 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
Any beings advanced enough to traverse interstellar distances are at least a thousand years beyond our technical level. Spending gobs of time… — 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
