Seth Shostak quote: "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 of my own job description. Others don't inevitably agree. Some will opine that there are better ways to spend the money."

The most attractive habitats for synthetic sentience might be the vicinities of exceptional sources ...
SETH SHOSTAK

Hollywood usually guesses that extraterrestrials would only be interested in one of three things: (1...
SETH SHOSTAK

It seems obvious that if a species has the brainpower for speech, along with the sort of appendages ...
SETH SHOSTAK

Admittedly, it would take industrial-grade chutzpah and a massive dose of malevolence for anyone to ...
SETH SHOSTAK

When I graduated high school, nearly a half-million people subscribed to 'Popular Electronics...
SETH SHOSTAK

It's hard to imagine anything more interesting than learning how we're woven into the enormo...
SETH SHOSTAK

Today's voguish threats, including climate change, population growth, massive war, and resource ...
SETH SHOSTAK

It's worth noting that invoking God as the entity who set our universe in motion isn't contr...
SETH SHOSTAK

A century ago, scientists believed there was only one obvious stomping ground for alien biology in o...
SETH SHOSTAK

Are two eyes, four appendages and an upright posture really essential for any creature that can ace ...
SETH SHOSTAK

The thing to keep in mind is that we're still in the very early days when it comes to the search...
SETH SHOSTAK

'What was there before the Big Bang?' That's a question that both kids and adults love t...
SETH SHOSTAK

In 1908, there was a persuasive demonstration of the power of high-speed, low-mass asteroids in rura...
SETH SHOSTAK

Each year, thousands of UFOs are sighted and reported, which is an impressive tally of unidentified ...
SETH SHOSTAK

Of course there is still unexplored terrestrial territory, but most of it is waterlogged. Submersed ...
SETH SHOSTAK

By 2020, most home computers will have the computing power of a human brain. That doesn't mean t...
SETH SHOSTAK

The bottom line is that finding orphan planets - small, faint, and located who-knows-where - is not ...
SETH SHOSTAK

The majority of my UFO diet consists of reports describing suspected encounters. This is not surpris...
SETH SHOSTAK

Junk, redundancy, and inefficiency characterize astrophysical signals. It seems they characterize ce...
SETH SHOSTAK

Are we the only members of the Galaxy that can actually understand what a galaxy is? Could Homo sapi...
SETH SHOSTAK

It will be the mother of all telescopes, and you can bet it will do for astronomy what genome sequen...
SETH SHOSTAK

The fact that we can't easily foresee clues that would betray an intelligence a million millenni...
SETH SHOSTAK

Plate tectonics is not all havoc and destruction. The slow movement of continents and ocean floors r...
SETH SHOSTAK

It's always a tough call deciding whether, as a scientist, you should argue publicly with the cr...
SETH SHOSTAK

I got interested in astronomy at the age of 8 because I was looking at an atlas of the planets in my...
SETH SHOSTAK

Note to academics: Aristarchus' track record of astronomical research would probably have guaran...
SETH SHOSTAK

The Moon is a ball of left-over debris from a cosmic collision that took place more than four billio...
SETH SHOSTAK

The stars look the same from night to night. Nebulae and galaxies are dully immutable, maintaining t...
SETH SHOSTAK

Ever since the infamous quiz show scandals of the 1950s, the feds had insisted that TV game shows be...
SETH SHOSTAK

Disasters happen. We still have no way to eliminate earthquakes, wildfires, hurricanes, floods or dr...
SETH SHOSTAK

I've often fantasized about visiting the Bahamian beach where Columbus first stumbled ashore in ...
SETH SHOSTAK

The split between religion and science is relatively new. Isaac Newton, who first worked out the law...
SETH SHOSTAK

The usual metric for whether a planet is habitable or not is to ascertain whether liquid water could...
SETH SHOSTAK

We can never prove that we're alone in the universe. But the Allen Telescope Array could prove t...
SETH SHOSTAK

Neil Armstrong was no Christopher Columbus. In most respects, he was better. Unlike the famous fifte...
SETH SHOSTAK

Consider that the overwhelming majority of those 40,000 near-Earth asteroids are small enough to fit...
SETH SHOSTAK

Forecasting Armageddon has become trendy of late, with a great deal of attention being given to an i...
SETH SHOSTAK

Consider: Life arose on Earth close to four billion years ago. Four billion years of slithering, swi...
SETH SHOSTAK

If this is the only planet on which not only life, but intelligent life, has arisen, that would be v...
SETH SHOSTAK

In archaeology, context is the basis of many discoveries that are imputed to the deliberate workings...
SETH SHOSTAK

Mars still remains the astrobiology community's number one choice for 'nearest rock with lif...
SETH SHOSTAK

Since the Renaissance, a concept called 'progress' has been baked into our society. Progress...
SETH SHOSTAK

Sending greeting cards to aliens is hardly a new idea. In 2005, Craigslist solicited messages for br...
SETH SHOSTAK

The strongest signals leaking off our planet are radar transmissions, not television or radio. The m...
SETH SHOSTAK

About the only things that are unique to Earth are our biota and our culture. If aliens ever come he...
SETH SHOSTAK

The overwhelming bulk of the cosmos is deathly quiet. But here and there - on worlds where matter is...
SETH SHOSTAK

Here's a news flash: scientists can be wrong. That's no big deal (unless the scientist is yo...
SETH SHOSTAK

Faith is a personal matter, and should never be a cudgel to stifle inquiry. We tried that approach a...
SETH SHOSTAK

You may not see massive UFO exhibits at your local science museum, but there's no dearth of sauc...
SETH SHOSTAK

If you could drive straight down, into a tunnel bored through the crust of the planet, you'd hit...
SETH SHOSTAK

The math is dead simple: it seems that the frequency of planets able to support life is roughly one ...
SETH SHOSTAK

Ever since the Second World War, television signals (as well as FM radio and radar) have served as H...
SETH SHOSTAK

Thanks to the fact that the Earth isn't a perfect sphere, and invoking a bunch of Newtonian phys...
SETH SHOSTAK

The central region of the Milky Way, known as the bulge, is stuffed with literally tens of billions ...
SETH SHOSTAK

I still remember my dismay in the summer of 2007 when - for the first time in the history of planet ...
SETH SHOSTAK

Is E.T. out there? Well, I work at the SETI Institute. That's almost my name. SETI: Search for E...
SETH SHOSTAK

The total funding of SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) in the U.S. is 0.0003 perce...
SETH SHOSTAK

What's a space elevator? Simply described, it's a thin ribbon, about 3 feet wide and 60 thou...
SETH SHOSTAK

The space elevator's not just another competitive technology, promoted by people who simply like...
SETH SHOSTAK

Star Trek's genial premise is that the cosmos is flush with intelligent species, and our descend...
SETH SHOSTAK

There's no doubt that the Moon is more than a handy night light and a hair restorer for werewolv...
SETH SHOSTAK

When I was a kid, which was just after Edison invented moving pictures, there were films that involv...
SETH SHOSTAK

Virtually any pointed edifice is considered a candidate for alien engineering. After all, how could ...
SETH SHOSTAK

Some pundits have proposed that the aliens have come here to breed with us. Apparently, too much bik...
SETH SHOSTAK

Clearly, unless thinking beings inevitably wipe themselves out soon after developing technology, ext...
SETH SHOSTAK

Clearly, enriching the cosmos with heavy elements takes a while. So there's inevitably an interv...
SETH SHOSTAK

Explorers tend to be the aggressive types - why else would they risk scurvy, mutiny and other bad th...
SETH SHOSTAK

Everything you see is filtered through your visual system (imperfect) and your brain (also imperfect...
SETH SHOSTAK

Recent results from astronomers who study the occasional gravitational lensing of unknown worlds by ...
SETH SHOSTAK

When was the last time you bought an American-made radio or television? If you're Gen X or young...
SETH SHOSTAK

We haven't yet found a speck of evidence for biology on another world, so we have no objective w...
SETH SHOSTAK

If aliens are really hanging out in our 'hood, it's hard to imagine any other fact more wort...
SETH SHOSTAK

It bears mentioning that the Milky Way is only one of 150 billion galaxies visible to our telescopes...
SETH SHOSTAK

The principal reason for the universe's poker face is that its constituents are far away. Stars ...
SETH SHOSTAK

Exploration is an oft-lauded human activity, and one that resonates in the same way that music and g...
SETH SHOSTAK

'E.T.' was far-fetched. 'E.T.' was this wimpy-looking kid that came to Earth to pick...
SETH SHOSTAK

In days gone by, scientists would speak solemnly about our solar system's 'habitable zone...
SETH SHOSTAK

The Earth has been lawned with life for something over 3.5 billion years. That's a span of time ...
SETH SHOSTAK

Any beings advanced enough to traverse interstellar distances are at least a thousand years beyond o...
SETH SHOSTAK

The Moon stabilizes Earth's obliquity. Well, almost. The tilt actually varies between 22 and 24....
SETH SHOSTAK

While human space travel is daunting, machines - with their indefinitely long lifetimes - could trav...
SETH SHOSTAK

Judging by informal observation, most young Americans burn up their spare time buffing their emotion...
SETH SHOSTAK

It's easy to reckon that the oomph to hurl even a Smart Car-size spacecraft to another star at, ...
SETH SHOSTAK

Jupiter, a world far larger than Earth, is so warm that it currently radiates more internal heat tha...
SETH SHOSTAK

The bottom line is, like, one in five stars has at least one planet where life might spring up. That...
SETH SHOSTAK

It seems that 'rocket scientist' is a job category that's here for the long haul, like &...
SETH SHOSTAK

The ideas of science germinate in a matrix of established knowledge gained by experiment; they are n...
SETH SHOSTAK

We've accounted for 95 percent of all the stars in the Milky Way. The other 5 percent are big, b...
SETH SHOSTAK

Estimates are that at least 70 per cent of all stars are accompanied by planets, and since the latte...
SETH SHOSTAK

The big picture comes when you step back and realize this is the one generation making the atlas of ...
SETH SHOSTAK

This plucky NASA telescope is able to find planets en masse. If you compare planet hunting to prospe...
SETH SHOSTAK

Consider: The human genome consists of about 3.3 billion base pairs. Since there are only four types...
SETH SHOSTAK

The mission of NASA's Kepler telescope is to lift the scales from our eyes and reveal to us just...
SETH SHOSTAK

The basic globe was there. One generation did that. All we have done since then is refine that globe...
SETH SHOSTAK

Despite tantalizing suggestions of fossilized microbes in meteorites, puzzling and possibly biogenic...
SETH SHOSTAK

The longtime standard for American TV was 525 lines from top to bottom of the image. As a practical ...
SETH SHOSTAK

Data from orbiting telescopes like NASA's Kepler Mission hint that the tally of habitable planet...
SETH SHOSTAK

Planets that don't currently sport plate tectonics, such as Venus and Mars, are scarcely habitab...
SETH SHOSTAK

We're not just any star stuff, most of which is humdrum hydrogen and listless helium. Our bodies...
SETH SHOSTAK

According to 'Star Trek' mythos, Starfleet Command - operational headquarters for a flotilla...
SETH SHOSTAK

Humans have existed only for the last 0.001 percent of cosmic time. All of which says that - unless ...
SETH SHOSTAK

Television is ephemeral, a fact that some will find reassuring. But earthlings will continue to pump...
SETH SHOSTAK

The planets and moons of our solar system are blatantly visible because they reflect sunlight. Witho...
SETH SHOSTAK

Our retinas and brains have been wired by a hundred million years of evolution to find outlines in a...
SETH SHOSTAK

We'll be 'outsourcing' our creativity and our thought processes to manufactured componen...
SETH SHOSTAK

If you still believe that aliens would travel hundreds of light years to carve temporary graffiti in...
SETH SHOSTAK

'Battleship' is not a film that Francois Truffaut would have made. Nor would any of those ot...
SETH SHOSTAK

A factory that can turn carbon nanotubes into a sheet a yard wide and long enough to stretch one-fou...
SETH SHOSTAK

I think there's a lot of intelligence out there, but that's just my guess. Question is: Are ...
SETH SHOSTAK

Given the tendency of many to picture God's realm as somewhere high above Earth - an idea that s...
SETH SHOSTAK

Imagine if the dinosaurs had tried picturing the rulers of their planet 100 million years hence. The...
SETH SHOSTAK

In general, when moviemakers talk to scientists, they usually see them as a resource to solve partic...
SETH SHOSTAK

Despite the impression you may have from watching too much TV, movies are not about reproducing real...
SETH SHOSTAK

Give consideration to the fact that alien astronomers could have scrutinized Earth for more than 4 b...
SETH SHOSTAK

Five centuries from now - barring unimaginable catastrophe - the moon will be developed real estate....
SETH SHOSTAK

'Dating Game' wasn't social commentary, political analysis, Shakespearean-level drama or...
SETH SHOSTAK

The era during which only governments could put hardware on the Moon is coming to an end. There are ...
SETH SHOSTAK

A practical way to travel between the stars is a must-have for space opera, and a sine qua non for o...
SETH SHOSTAK

On Mars, where the air is spare - a hundred times less dense than on Earth - someone could hear you ...
SETH SHOSTAK

Even if the Moon didn't exist - even if it had been vaporized billions of years ago by cantanker...
SETH SHOSTAK

When it comes to brains, size matters. It's not all that matters, of course. Whales and dolphins...
SETH SHOSTAK

As far as I can tell, the only unambiguous consequence of the claimed invasion of Earth by beings fr...
SETH SHOSTAK

Charles Darwin sailed around the world for two years on the 'Beagle,' and he had quite a bit...
SETH SHOSTAK

You look at most artists, the arc of their career, there's a definite decline at the end. And th...
SETH

For me, the very last great strip is 'Peanuts.' After 'Peanuts,' there are a very fe...
SETH

When I started out in the eighties, the idea of creating serious comics for adults was pretty laugha...
SETH

I think obviously there's a core of who you are, and as you get older, you become more aware of ...
SETH

I am lazy, but for some reason, I am so paranoid that I end up working hard.
SETH ROGEN

I love speculating about solutions to problems in mathematics. I have no interest whatever in sudoku...
VIKRAM SETH

When I realised that I had feelings for men as well as women, at first I was worried and frightened,...
VIKRAM SETH

I am careful about fiction. A novel is not a tract or an essay. If I want to write about land reform...
VIKRAM SETH

If somebody writes clearly, you can pretty much tell immediately if something is shallow or deep, wh...
VIKRAM SETH

You can talk good ideas out of existence.
VIKRAM SETH

Good music is good music, but it has to be good.
VIKRAM SETH

Fiction basically is a form of gossip where you want to enter other people's lives, the lives of...
VIKRAM SETH

I have a reputation for being hermitlike. I'm not. I'm just obsessed with my work.
VIKRAM SETH

As for what I listen to after writing, it could be anything - but I've noticed that if the curre...
VIKRAM SETH

I think it's possible to be multi-rooted, rather like a banyan tree, without being deracinated.
VIKRAM SETH

The trick to being a novelist is to act like an iceberg. Make it seem as if you're displaying on...
VIKRAM SETH

It is exciting to write about the present once one gets beyond the trivia of the moment. As a time t...
VIKRAM SETH

Poetry, I think, intensifies the reader's experience. If it's a humorous facet of the story,...
VIKRAM SETH

I don't pick and choose subjects or settings; they pick and choose me.
VIKRAM SETH

Do not write if there is no tremendous urge to do so. At the heart, there must be an inspiration or ...
VIKRAM SETH

I'm not sure anyone can understand a whole life, even their own.
VIKRAM SETH

In spite of all temptations of belonging to many nations, I've remained an Indian.
VIKRAM SETH

I'm actually a very lazy person. Most of the time, I'm happy to sit around and stare. Or wat...
VIKRAM SETH

Revision has its own peculiar pleasures and its own peculiar frustrations. The ground rules are alre...
VIKRAM SETH

My main motivation is not to get bored. I'm just hoping I get a vaguely maverick reputation.
VIKRAM SETH

The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.
VIKRAM SETH

I need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything.
VIKRAM SETH

I don't think anyone should be banned. If you don't like a book, set it aside.
VIKRAM SETH

If you ask most high schoolers who Bruce Lee is, they will say that it someone they sit next to in E...
SETH ROGEN

The way to work with a bully is to take the ball and go home. First time, every time. When there'...
SETH GODIN

I loved the Rumble that Shawn Michaels won. Bulldog threw him over, and he hung on by the skin of th...
SETH ROLLINS

Before I discovered CrossFit, I was really just doing regular bodybuilding, didn't understand at...
SETH ROLLINS

Most people have bosses who hire them to fill a slot in the work chart and to do what they are told....
SETH GODIN

'The Brady Bunch' asks nothing of you as a viewer. Sometimes is just what the doctor ordered...
SETH MACFARLANE

Leaders lead when they take positions, when they connect with their tribes, and when they help the t...
SETH GODIN

A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an id...
SETH GODIN

The number one thing to steal from your competitors: Wisdom.
SETH GODIN

I wrote on a show called Johnny Bravo when I was at Hanna-Barbera.
SETH MACFARLANE

My blogging life is basically goalless. I like the zen nature of that, and paradoxically, it improve...
SETH GODIN

One reason I encourage people to blog is that the act of doing it stretches your available vocabular...
SETH GODIN

At the age of four, you were an artist. And at seven, you were a poet.
SETH GODIN

The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following...
SETH GODIN

True friends will always push you towards the great possibilities of your future, false friends will...
SETH BROWN

God save us from people who mean well.
VIKRAM SETH

If it looks like shit, smells like shit, and feels like shit, you don't have to actually eat it to k...
SETH EISENBERG

Rules are just helpful guidelines for stupid people who can't make up their own minds.
SETH HOFFMAN

Letting your customers set your standards is a dangerous game, because the race to the bottom is pre...
SETH GODIN

And it turns out that tribes, not money, not factories, that can change our world, that can change p...
SETH GODIN

My styles range quite a bit. I go for an all-around kind of fan. Never wanted to be the dude that co...
SETH ROLLINS

Realism hasn't fallen out of favor with most people, who are interested in people's lives ra...
VIKRAM SETH

The danger of the Web is that you can go from idea to public announcement in under ten minutes.
SETH GODIN

I mean, we make a 15-minute show that's incredibly silly, even though all of our scenic designer...
SETH GREEN

At one point, I was hell-bent on being a Disney animator, and sort of got over that in college and w...
SETH MACFARLANE

Working with Al Pacino was an amazing experience. He's such an amazing guy. He's an incredib...
SETH NUMRICH

I don't make the best movies in the world, but at times, I do feel like I'm adding something...
SETH ROGEN

For just a few dollars a dose, vaccines save lives and help reduce poverty. Unlike medical treatment...
SETH BERKLEY

The great city can teach something that no university by itself can altogether impart: a vivid sense...
SETH LOW

You can't stop wars to build tertiary teaching hospitals, but you can say, 'Let's stop f...
SETH BERKLEY

I love science, and I believe in it. I have a faith that science can solve problems and make the wor...
SETH BERKLEY

When it comes to providing aid, developing innovations, and making bold steps that change the course...
SETH BERKLEY

Investments in immunization yield a rate of return on a par with educating our children - and higher...
SETH BERKLEY

History will not judge HIV/AIDS kindly... the harshest words will be reserved for how the world resp...
SETH BERKLEY

I was a serial monogamist.
SETH BERKLEY

In large part, thanks to widespread immunization, the number of young children dying each year has d...
SETH BERKLEY

I wish we could have state-of-the-art hospitals in every corner of the earth... but realistically, i...
SETH BERKLEY

We've actually eliminated Type II polio in the world, at least as far as we can tell.
SETH BERKLEY

Now, you might think of flu as just a really bad cold, but it can be a death sentence. Every year, 3...
SETH BERKLEY

Healthy children are more likely to attend school and are better able to learn. Healthy workers are ...
SETH BERKLEY

When AIDS first appeared, people didn't know what it was. You'll remember that it affected m...
SETH BERKLEY

Science is one of the comparative advantages of our knowledge-based economy, and focusing on our pro...
SETH BERKLEY

The virus that causes AIDS is the trickiest pathogen scientists have ever confronted. It mutates fur...
SETH BERKLEY

You'd see little shallow graves, lined up, one after the other - babies. That's what happens...
SETH BERKLEY

New vaccines are being developed all the time, which could save many more lives and dramatically imp...
SETH BERKLEY

Measles is probably the best argument for why there needs to be global health, and why we have to th...
SETH BERKLEY

The return on investment in global health is tremendous, and the biggest bang for the buck comes fro...
SETH BERKLEY

Now, when you get a viral infection, what normally happens is it takes days or weeks for your body t...
SETH BERKLEY

Leadership is about vision and responsibility, not power.
SETH BERKLEY

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 of my own job description. Others don't inevitably agree. Some will opine that there are better ways to spend the money.

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Seth Shostak

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 of my own job description. Others don't inevitably agree. Some will opine that there are better ways to spend the money.

Seth Shostak

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