Seth Shostak
Seth Shostak
Seth Shostakis an American astronomer, currently Senior Astronomer and Director, Center for SETI Research...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
CountryUnited States of America
according carrying command cosmic craft gate golden peace san
According to 'Star Trek' mythos, Starfleet Command - operational headquarters for a flotilla of craft that keep the cosmic peace - is located in San Francisco's Presidio, in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge (still carrying traffic, even in the 23rd century).
advanced ages air beings chain distances equivalent examine examining force mail missiles sending spending technical thousand time
Any beings advanced enough to traverse interstellar distances are at least a thousand years beyond our technical level. Spending gobs of time examining our missiles is equivalent to sending the Air Force back to the Middle Ages and insisting they examine the chain mail factories.
currently far heat internal larger receives
Jupiter, a world far larger than Earth, is so warm that it currently radiates more internal heat than it receives from the Sun.
combining cosmos disturbing emotions far floating random thrown unlimited
If the cosmos isn't finite, then far, far away, floating duplicates of your brain - with all its experiences, thoughts, and emotions - are occasionally (and temporarily) thrown together by the random combining of atoms. Such 'Boltzmann brains,' as they're called, are a disturbing consequence of an unlimited universe.
advance beings billions developing inevitably intelligence millions soon technology themselves unless wipe
Clearly, unless thinking beings inevitably wipe themselves out soon after developing technology, extraterrestrial intelligence could often be millions or billions of years in advance of us. We're the galaxy's noodling newbies.
billion complement telescopes visible
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.
asteroid ball billion cosmic countless debris existence four hit infant large natural system took
The Moon is a ball of left-over debris from a cosmic collision that took place more than four billion years ago. A Mars-sized asteroid - one of the countless planetesimals that were frantically churning our solar system into existence - hit the infant Earth, bequeathing it a very large natural satellite.
carbon factory industrial local moon sheet space stretch turn wide yard
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 show-stopper for the space elevator. The ribbon.
becoming copper economic essential high life materials metals might mining offer providing rapidly society
Mining asteroids is a well-oiled trope of science-fiction. But someday, actually doing it will make economic sense. Many of the essential metals of our society, such as platinum, copper and zinc, are rapidly becoming scarce. The asteroids might offer a replacement supply, providing the materials our descendants will need for a high quality life.
funding health human hunt money percent search signals spent total
The total funding of SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) in the U.S. is 0.0003 percent of the tax monies spent on health and human services. And it's not even tax money. The SETI Institute's hunt for signals is funded by donations.
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Virtually any pointed edifice is considered a candidate for alien engineering. After all, how could the Egyptians or Mayans have possibly stacked up stone blocks into pyramids?
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Very few societies on Earth developed science as we know it today. On the other hand, the number is not zero - the Greeks, the Chinese, and the Maya did, among others. Once invented, science proved so useful that it spread like mold on a petri dish.
both bright dominate forget night percent rare stars
We've accounted for 95 percent of all the stars in the Milky Way. The other 5 percent are big, bright stars - the kind that dominate the night sky, but are lamentably both rare and short-lived. If biology's your thing, you can forget those guys.
above assume course earth given god greek high mountain picture plausible realm seem somewhere sounds special stories tendency tops
Given the tendency of many to picture God's realm as somewhere high above Earth - an idea that sounds suspiciously like the Greek stories of deities perched on inaccessible mountain tops - it may seem plausible to assume that astronomers have special insight. Well, of course they don't.