Author

It's always a tough call deciding whether, as a scientist, you should argue publicly with the creationists. It's a dilemma that I encounter frequently in another subject area: Does it make sense to bandy words with someone from the UFO community?

From Seth Shostak

Faith is a personal matter, and should never be a cudgel to stifle inquiry. We tried that approach about 1,200 years ago. The experiment was called the Dark Ages.

From Seth Shostak

The ideas of science germinate in a matrix of established knowledge gained by experiment; they are not lonesome thoughts, born in a rarified realm where no researcher has ever gone before.

From 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.

From Seth Shostak

Mars still remains the astrobiology community's number one choice for 'nearest rock with life,' but there are many researchers who argue that the moons of Jupiter are better bets. In particular, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto are all thought to hide vast oceans of liquid water beneath their icy, outer skins.

From Seth Shostak

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.

From Seth Shostak

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.'

From Seth Shostak

The mission of NASA's Kepler telescope is to lift the scales from our eyes and reveal to us just how typical our home world is. Kepler operates by measuring the dimming of stars as planets pass ('transit') in front of them. It has found thousands of previously unknown worlds.

From 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.

From Seth Shostak

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 science.

From Seth Shostak

Seth Shostak

Notable Quotes

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Authors with Opposing Views

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Plato

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