Scientists on Reddit

Seth Shostak

Senior astronomer at the SETI Institute

How we know it's theirs

The 2012 r/IAmA AMA, posted from this account

We retrieved 5 posts and 395 comments from u/sshostak, dated 2012 to 2019, most often in r/askscience, r/science and r/IAmA.

Best moment

A redditor wrote in r/science

On “I’m Seth Shostak, and I direct the search for extraterrestrials at the SETI Institute in California. We’re trying to find evidence of intelligent life in space: aliens at least as clever as we are. AMA!”

Considering that human beings have been around for 200,000 years or so and we have been communicating through radio waves for about 100 years, isn't it kind of naive to think that aliens that could have 1 million years on us would still be using radio communication? What else…

u/sshostak replied

I still use the wheel every day. It's old, but it never ceases to be useful.

More moments

A redditor wrote in r/askscience

On “AskScience AMA Series: I am Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI institute. Ask Me Anything!”

If we're pinged, what will be your personal reaction? Where will you go, and what will you do?

u/sshostak replied

In the case of the 1997 false alarm we had, I just got very nervous, and worried about canceling all the meetings on my calendar for the next two weeks. And then realized that this was going to change my job for a lot longer than that!

In a thread on r/IAmA

I'm Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute AMA.

u/sshostak replied

Our galaxy has roughly a trillion planets. Hard to imagine that they're ALL sterile. Traveling between galaxies is hard ... typical distances are millions of light-years. That's a trip that, even with our fastest rockets, would take longer than the…

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Our galaxy has roughly a trillion planets. Hard to imagine that they're ALL sterile.

Traveling between galaxies is hard ... typical distances are millions of light-years. That's a trip that, even with our fastest rockets, would take longer than the current age of the universe. That's a long time to be sitting in the middle seat ...

A redditor wrote in r/askscience

On “AskScience AMA Series: I am Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI institute. Ask Me Anything!”

Hi Seth, Do people work at SETI who lack the faith that you have regarding aliens? Thanks

u/sshostak replied

Actually, I've never asked them this! But I don't think any of the scientists would work here if they didn't think that biology is more of an infection than a miracle. Heck, this is the Silicon Valley. There are better-paying jobs across the street ...