Quotes by Seth Shostak

“If you still believe that aliens would travel hundreds of light years to carve temporary graffiti in our wheat, then your imagination is one of the seven wonders of the world, and should be bronzed.”

“Like prospecting in the 19th century, reconnaissance of the asteroids would of necessity take place in an arena where trouble is likely and help is distant. Heroic stories of individual triumph and...”

“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 hour. It's called the asthenosphere - a sluggish sea, several hundred m...”

“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 ...”

“The stars look the same from night to night. Nebulae and galaxies are dully immutable, maintaining the same overall appearance for thousands or millions of years. Indeed, only the sun, moon and pla...”

“Each year, thousands of UFOs are sighted and reported, which is an impressive tally of unidentified aerial phenomena. Surveys show that roughly one-third of the populace believes that at least some...”

“Sending greeting cards to aliens is hardly a new idea. In 2005, Craigslist solicited messages for broadcast to space by a transmitter in Florida, and in 2008, NASA beamed a Beatles song to the Nort...”

“The principal reason for the universe's poker face is that its constituents are far away. Stars careen through space, and galaxies spin at speeds thousands of times faster than a jet plane. But giv...”

“It bears mentioning that the Milky Way is only one of 150 billion galaxies visible to our telescopes - and each of these will have its own complement of planets.”

“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 anc...”

“A factory that can turn carbon nanotubes into a sheet a yard wide and long enough to stretch one-fourth of the way to the moon is not something you'll find at your local industrial park. That's the...”

“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...”

“In the four years since its launch, Kepler has chalked up 122 new and confirmed planets. It's also caught the scent of nearly three thousand additional objects, of which probably 80 percent or more...”

“The math is dead simple: it seems that the frequency of planets able to support life is roughly one percent. In other words, a billion or more such worlds exist in our galaxy alone. That's a lot of...”

“Our computers double in capability on time scales of only a few years. It's hardly outrageous to believe that we will successfully develop thinking machines within a handful of decades, or at most ...”

“By 2020, most home computers will have the computing power of a human brain. That doesn't mean that they are brains, but it means that in terms of raw processing, they can process bits as fast as a...”

“Neil Armstrong was no Christopher Columbus. In most respects, he was better. Unlike the famous fifteenth century seafarer, Armstrong knew where he landed. He also spent his time in public service, ...”

“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.”

“You may not see massive UFO exhibits at your local science museum, but there's no dearth of saucer stories infesting my email. Every day, I receive several reports of alien sightings, extraterrestr...”

“Typically, only about 2 percent of the American populace tunes in to PBS's 'Nova' series - the most successful science show on the tube. 'Survivor' and 'X Factor' get twice the ratings.”