Seth Shostak : (10)

" There will be an end point to how good TV pictures can get. The boob tube has hugely benefited from the rapid advance of digital electronics. Consequently, the strategy for hardware has changed. In the old days, sets had to be as simple as Elmer Fudd to keep them inexpensive. All the technical ‘smarts’ were at the transmitter end. " - Seth Shostak

" Despite tantalizing suggestions of fossilized microbes in meteorites, puzzling and possibly biogenic methane gas in the martian atmosphere, and a long-standing controversy over the Viking lander experiments of nearly 40 years ago, there’s still no Exhibit A that points unequivocally to biology in our own back yard. " - Seth Shostak

" The central region of the Milky Way, known as the bulge, is stuffed with literally tens of billions of stars. And most of these are old – considerably older than our Sun or its neighbors – because this part of the galaxy formed first. Consequently, bulge stars are generally deficient in heavy elements. " - Seth Shostak

" Judging by informal observation, most young Americans burn up their spare time buffing their emotional IQ and self-esteem with social media and non-stop texting. That’s great for eye-thumb coordination, but what about the satisfaction of actually making something? " - Seth Shostak

" 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. " - Seth Shostak

" We can no better imagine what will be happening on the moon 500 years from now than Columbus could imagine contemporary Manhattan. Except to say that it will be a place familiar to billions of people. " - 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

" 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 ago, Earth underwent a planet-wide deep freeze, with ice covering the oceans from the poles to the equator. " - Seth Shostak

" Astronomers still can’t decide what the shape of our universe is. Is it closed and finite, which is to say, is there a countable tally of all the galaxies that exist, even beyond the ones we can see? Or is it infinite? The latter possibility is still on the table. " - 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