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? – Seth Shostak
The usual metric for whether a planet is habitable or not is to ascertain whether liquid water could exist on its surface. Most worlds will either be too cold, too hot or of a type (like Jupiter) that may have no solid surface and be swaddled in noxious gases. – Seth Shostak
It will be the mother of all telescopes, and you can bet it will do for astronomy what genome sequencing is doing for biology. The clumsy, if utilitarian, name of this mirrored monster is Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, or LSST. You can’t use it yet, but a peak in the Chilean Andes has been decapitated to provide a level spot for placement. – Seth Shostak
Are two eyes, four appendages and an upright posture really essential for any creature that can ace the galactic SAT’s? Maybe not. In fact, I’d venture that any aliens we ever detect or (less likely) encounter will look quite different than this self-referential stereotype. – Seth Shostak
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 acreage, and it takes industrial-strength credulity to believe it’s all bleakly barren. – Seth Shostak
A century ago, scientists believed there was only one obvious stomping ground for alien biology in our solar system: Mars. Because it was reminiscent of Earth, Mars was assumed to be chock-a-block with animate beings, and its putative inhabitants got a lot of column inches and screen time. – Seth Shostak
It’s hardly a secret that I’m skeptical of declarations that the aliens are out and about on our planet. Still, I try to answer every one of these mails and phone calls because, after all, it’s not a violation of physics to travel from one star system to another. – Seth Shostak
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. – Seth Shostak
The split between religion and science is relatively new. Isaac Newton, who first worked out the laws by which gravity held the planets and even the stars in their traces, was sufficiently impressed by the scale and regularity of the universe to ascribe it all to God. – Seth Shostak
Most of the things at the zoo don’t look like us. We’re one design that works. Our chimp pals sort of look like us, so that’s a different take on the same basic design. But fish don’t look like us, and giraffes don’t. They look a little like us, but not too much. And insects certainly don’t look like us, and they work just fine. – Seth Shostak
The bottom line is that finding orphan planets – small, faint, and located who-knows-where – is not for the faint of heart. The task is comparable to observing a match flame at the distance of Pluto. The WISE satellite, a hi-tech, space-based infrared telescope especially suited for such work, has found only a few. – Seth Shostak
Data from orbiting telescopes like NASA’s Kepler Mission hint that the tally of habitable planets in our galaxy is many billion. If E.T.’s not out there, then Earth is more than merely special – it’s some sort of miracle. – Seth Shostak
Charles Darwin sailed around the world for two years on the ‘Beagle,’ and he had quite a bit of interest in things like the iguanas of the Galapagos, even though they were primitive compared to your average Englishman. – Seth Shostak
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 failure, set on landscapes never seen by humankind, are in the cards. – Seth Shostak
Look, science is hard, it has a reputation of being hard, and the facts are, it is hard, and that’s the result of 400 years of science, right? I mean, in the 18th century, in the 18th century you could become an expert on any field of science in an afternoon by going to a library, if you could find the library, right? – Seth Shostak
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. – Seth Shostak
Any society that could come here could pick up the lights from New York. What should we do about that? Should we darken New York from now until the last human expires? Would we want to turn off all the radars at JFK airport? – 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 and levees, and by setting aside money to clean up afterwards. – Seth Shostak
If aliens are really hanging out in our ‘hood, it’s hard to imagine any other fact more worthy of study. If not, then why does such a large fraction of the populace insist on believing they’re here? – Seth Shostak
It’s easy to reckon that the oomph to hurl even a Smart Car-size spacecraft to another star at, say, 20 percent the speed of light (and land it when it arrives) is the energy contained in 50 billion gallons of gasoline. The tank’s not big enough. – Seth Shostak
Heads are a good deal, and I think they would be a common feature. It’s hard to think of species that don’t have heads, although there are some. It’s good to have a head because it puts some of the sensory organs – eyes, ears, whiskers or whatever – next to the CPU, the brain. – Seth Shostak
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. – Seth Shostak
Engineers are now experimenting with 4,096-line TV systems, suggesting that with the next generation of sets you’ll be able to count the grass blades on the Superbowl field, an obvious lifestyle improvement. – 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
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. – Seth Shostak
Ever since the Second World War, television signals (as well as FM radio and radar) have served as Homo sapiens’ emissaries into deep space. High-frequency, high-power broadcasts have filled an Earth-centered bubble more than 60 light-years in radius with signals. – Seth Shostak
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 of this sky show is due to extraterrestrial spacecraft, here to probe our airspace and, when that proves boring, our bodies. – Seth Shostak
Sure, nobody will make a fortune if we figure out why the Big Bang happened. But just about everyone would like to know. – Seth Shostak
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 bit players were guys in rubber suits. Such practical considerations forced Hollywood’s hand when it came to aliens – they look like us for good reasons. – Seth Shostak
Diminutive worlds are more likely to be rocky, and lapped by oceans and atmospheres. In the vernacular of ‘Star Trek,’ these would be M-class planets: life-friendly oases where biology could begin and bumpy-faced Klingons might exist. – Seth Shostak
