Quotes from Seth Shostak

Imagine if the dinosaurs had tried picturing the rulers of their planet 100 million years hence. They'd undoubtedly envision these creatures as... dinosaurs! Conceiving of aliens as polished versions of ourselves is appealing, but unconvincing.

The idea of close encounters of the zero'th kind - which is to say, not a close encounter at all, but simply uncovering evidence that someone's out there - dates back to the Victorian era.

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.

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?

It bears mentioning that the Milky Way is only one of 150 billion galaxies visible to our telescopes - and each of these will have its own complement of planets.

The planets and moons of our solar system are blatantly visible because they reflect sunlight. Without the nearby Sun, these planets would be cryptic and dark on the sky.

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?

A practical way to travel between the stars is a must-have for space opera, and a sine qua non for our frequently vaunted future as a galactic society.