Seth Shostak
Seth Shostak
Seth Shostakis an American astronomer, currently Senior Astronomer and Director, Center for SETI Research...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
CountryUnited States of America
bit cosmic existed humans instance intelligence last machinery nearly percent says time unless
Humans have existed only for the last 0.001 percent of cosmic time. All of which says that - unless the Homo sapiens brain is the one-and-only instance of cogitating machinery - nearly all the intelligence that's out there is beyond our level. And that intelligence is more than just a little bit beyond.
banal european filled folk nor quaint towns
'Battleship' is not a film that Francois Truffaut would have made. Nor would any of those other namby-pamby European directors. Nope, this picture eschews that Continental obsession with small stories, set in quaint towns filled with pockmarked folk doing their banal things.
good
I actually think the chances that we'll find E.T. are pretty good.
anchor drilling feet heavy lower miles simply stretching surface thin thousand top upwards wide
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 anchor (think of an oil drilling platform), and the top is capped with a counterweight.
consequences few interested mostly notice practical programs watching
We're interested in things that have big teeth, and you can see the evolutionary value of that, and you can also see the practical consequences by watching 'Animal Planet.' You notice they make very few programs about gerbils. It's mostly about things that have big teeth.
check consider double infinitely might mirror moves next parallel reflect somewhere special time ultimate
The next time you check your moves in the mirror and reflect on how special you are, consider that somewhere in this universe or in another parallel universe, your double might be doing the same. This would be the ultimate Copernican Revolution. Not only are we not special, we could be infinitely ordinary.
artificial believe capability century computers develop double few handful hardly leave machines outrageous quickly scales time within
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 a century or two. If that happens, these artificial sentients will quickly leave us behind.
commercial concerned humans landing margaret protecting walked zones
NASA's Office of Commercial Exploration has been concerned about protecting the landing zones where humans first walked on the Moon, and one of my colleagues, ecologist Margaret Race, has been part of their deliberations.
few future hundred imposing million plate smoothed
Mountains aren't eternal: even the most imposing massifs are smoothed away by weathering in a few hundred million years or less. Plate tectonics makes new ones, and without it, our future would be flat.
assume default nature observe premise saying science seen
It's the default premise in science: If you observe something in nature only once, you assume that what you've seen is typical. That's because 'typical' is just another way of saying 'most probable.'
believe drawings fit highly invaders note people quickly
I you look at the drawings of aliens made by people who believe that Earth is under saucer attack, you'll quickly note that most of these invaders fit the Tinseltown mold. But you have to admit: the grays are highly anthropomorphic.
few latin signal studied stuff thousand took
I studied Latin in high school, and I was reading stuff from Cicero. And that signal took a few thousand years to get to me. But I was still interested in what he had to say.
breed guesses interested machinery
Hollywood usually guesses that extraterrestrials would only be interested in one of three things: (1) They want to breed with us, because their own reproductive machinery is on the blink; (2) They want Earth's resources; or (3) They want the Earth. All of it.
aggressive bad interested likely somewhere tend types
Explorers tend to be the aggressive types - why else would they risk scurvy, mutiny and other bad things to go out there? So, you could say that any aliens that are actually moving and interested in going somewhere are likely to be more aggressive. But who knows?