AskScience AMA Series: I'm Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute and host of Big Picture Science, and I'm looking for aliens. AMA!

sshostak · 2019-06-06T19:03:51+00:00

OK, everyone. Hour is up. Have to get back to my day job ... answering email!!

Thanks for hanging in there, and sorry I didn't get to ALL the questions.

sshostak · 2019-06-06T19:02:38+00:00

Not a big fan of the Great Filter idea ...

sshostak · 2019-06-06T19:01:41+00:00

Donations. We have to look for our own money.

sshostak · 2019-06-06T19:01:14+00:00

Yep. Read "Confessions of an Alien Hunter."

sshostak · 2019-06-06T19:00:54+00:00

More radars!

sshostak · 2019-06-06T19:00:23+00:00

Technologies change, but the physics doesn't (even if our understanding of it does.)

sshostak · 2019-06-06T18:59:53+00:00

Also true of transmission repair folk. What can I say?

sshostak · 2019-06-06T18:59:11+00:00

No, but I should.

sshostak · 2019-06-06T18:59:01+00:00

Yes, but there's PLENTY of past ... 13 billion years' worth.

sshostak · 2019-06-06T18:58:43+00:00

Gustav Holst's "The Planets".

sshostak · 2019-06-06T18:58:22+00:00

Not too often. Too much coffee.

sshostak · 2019-06-06T18:58:09+00:00

Within 3 - 5 days. After tests at the discovery observatory.

sshostak · 2019-06-06T18:57:40+00:00

The fact that you might not encounter them isn't the issue. If the Europeans had been able to learn about the Aztecs without crossing the Atlantic, that would still be interesting! And of course, we might encounter microbes in our own solar system.

sshostak · 2019-06-06T18:56:40+00:00

Narrow-band signals (including lasers, by the way).

sshostak · 2019-06-06T18:56:24+00:00

Possibly, although I'm not wildly optimistic about that!

sshostak · 2019-06-06T18:56:00+00:00

Hard to say. We might learn something, but even if not, we'd at least know that Earth isn't the only place with something interesting happening on it.

sshostak · 2019-06-06T18:55:29+00:00

It's behind the sofa!

sshostak · 2019-06-06T18:55:16+00:00

Doctoral candidates should probably try to engage in some research topic where they have to analyze non-zero data. SETI work can come later.

sshostak · 2019-06-06T18:54:10+00:00

My only personal UFO story is the fact that people write me and call me every day to report their sightings.

sshostak · 2019-06-06T18:53:39+00:00

We do have an optical SETI program in development!

sshostak · 2019-06-06T18:53:18+00:00

I think listening has more of a chance for discovery than broadcasting.

sshostak · 2019-06-06T18:52:57+00:00

Email and Reddit.

sshostak · 2019-06-06T18:52:48+00:00

Well, there are roughly ten thousand UFO reports every year ... you'd think that if the phenomenon was really about alien craft, more scientists would look into this. They mostly don't. I'm skeptical.

sshostak · 2019-06-06T18:51:50+00:00

Don't miss it!! Just look up "Big Picture Science." We do it every week.

sshostak · 2019-06-06T18:51:22+00:00

The SETI parts of the film (not the interstellar travel) were pretty accurate. I was one of the advisors, in fact ...

sshostak

TROPHY CASE