Nathan Myhrvold Quotes

Will searching for distant messages work? Is there intelligent life out there? The SETI effort is worth continuing, but our common-sense beacons approach seems more likely to answer those questions.

There's so much interest and curiosity about alien life, interstellar travel. It's always in the news.

Among the radio astronomers of SETI - the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - it's only sort-of a joke that the true hallmark of intelligent life is the creation of radio astronomy.

Within the scientific community, there is healthy skepticism. And the question is, 'How do you ever get to a meaningful null result? How long and how hard do SETI scientists have to look for extraterrestrial intelligence and find nothing before they say, 'There is nothing. We are alone.'

SETI is probably the most important quest of our time , and it amazes me that governments and corporations are not supporting it sufficiently.

Is E.T. out there? Well, I work at the SETI Institute. That's almost my name. SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. In other words, I look for aliens, and when I tell people that at a cocktail party, they usually look at me with a mildly incredulous look on their face. I try to keep my own face somewhat dispassionate.

Perhaps, as some wit remarked, the best proof that there is Intelligent Life in Outer Space is the fact it hasn't come here. Well, it can't hide forever - one day we will overhear it.

We can never prove that we're alone in the universe. But the Allen Telescope Array could prove that we're not.

I actually think the chances that we'll find E.T. are pretty good.

I think it quite likely that we are the only civilization within several hundred light years; otherwise we would have heard radio waves.

People quite often think of the question 'Are we alone in the universe?' in terms of other civilizations out there: life forms that have reached at least our level of technological development.

Galactic plankton is undoubtedly out there, but it's statistically highly likely there's also another intelligent civilisation out there somewhere. Unfortunately, the distances and time differences are so great, communication might remain impossible.

Life outside of Earth is probably going to be really hard to find.

We should be ready to reach out beyond our planet and beyond our solar system to find out what is really going on out there.

For many centuries, humans have speculated that there might be planetary systems around other stars and that there could be extraterrestrial life there and even intelligent being. However, those were simply speculations, and now we have evidence for the first part of these ideas.

We're all interested in life outside of Earth. We all have a fascination with what's out there because we don't really know.

I am very excited to be supporting one of the world's most visionary efforts to seek basic answers to some of the fundamental question about our universe and what other civilisations may exist elsewhere.

It's just too egotistical to think that we are the only lifeform in the universe.

It would be a pity if, frustrated by the price of travel, we elected to become a society that never made contact, that never gave SETI a fair chance.

With 'Extinction Machine,' I wanted to start some conversations about whether we're alone in the universe and what that might mean.

First and foremost, The Quiet Invasion is a first contact story. What would we do if we actually found evidence of alien life out there? It's also about politics.

Clearly, unless thinking beings inevitably wipe themselves out soon after developing technology, extraterrestrial intelligence could often be millions or billions of years in advance of us. We're the galaxy's noodling newbies.

I think there's all kinds of life out there, including intelligent life, but the reason we haven't found each other is because of vast distances.

Are we alone? Many, many people on planet Earth want to know. We are on the cusp of being able to answer that question... because of the investments we're making in space technology.

It would seem staggeringly arrogant to think we were the only ones in the universe, but at the same time, I don't know if contact has been made yet or not because you think something like that would be hard to cover up. I'm still on the fence. I keep an open mind about all of these things.