Seth Shostak

“Disasters happen. We still have no way to eliminate earthquakes, wildfires, hurricanes, floods or droughts. We cope as best we can by fortifying ourselves against danger with building codes...”

“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?”

“When I was a kid, which was just after Edison invented moving pictures, there were films that involved aliens coming to Earth for bad purposes.”

“The Earth has been lawned with life for something over 3.5 billion years. That's a span of time great enough to encompass some honest-to-goodness catastrophe. For example, 700 million years...”

“In days gone by, scientists would speak solemnly about our solar system's 'habitable zone' - a theoretical region extending from Venus to Mars, but perhaps not encompassing either, where a p...”

“Estimates are that at least 70 per cent of all stars are accompanied by planets, and since the latter can occur in systems rather than as individuals (think of our own solar system), the num...”

“Television is ephemeral, a fact that some will find reassuring. But earthlings will continue to pump the kilowatts into the ether. And eventually, when those signals have washed over a few h...”

“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 inter...”

“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...”

“The thing to keep in mind is that we're still in the very early days when it comes to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Saying there's a silence is a bit like if Columbus, lookin...”

“Some pundits have proposed that the aliens have come here to breed with us. Apparently, too much bike riding or something similar has rendered them incapable of reproducing within their own...”

“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....”

“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 sophisticated computer animation, most extraterrestrial...”

“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...”

“'E.T.' was far-fetched. 'E.T.' was this wimpy-looking kid that came to Earth to pick some plants, but he came from the Andromeda Galaxy to do that.”

“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 se...”

“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 scie...”

“Star Trek's genial premise is that the cosmos is flush with intelligent species, and our descendants will interact with them face-to-face, thanks to warp drive and some winsome space cadets.”

“In archaeology, context is the basis of many discoveries that are imputed to the deliberate workings of intelligence. If I find a rock chipped in such a way as to give it a sharp edge, and t...”

“When was the last time you bought an American-made radio or television? If you're Gen X or younger, the answer is 'never.' Does the label on that shirt or skirt you're wearing say 'Made in t...”