Seth Shostak Quotes

The single best thing about Mars is the reduced gravity. It's 38 percent of Earth's gravity - about one third. Almost never have you seen that portrayed in film or television. Mars is just portrayed as a place that's got reddish sand but is otherwise pretty much identical to the Mojave Desert, and that's not the case.

The thing that sets Mars apart is that it is the one planet that is enough like Earth that you can imagine life possibly once having taken hold there.

All indications are that three and a half billion years ago, Mars looked like Earth. It had lakes. It had rivers. It had river deltas. It had snow-capped peaks and puffy clouds and blue sky. Three and a half billion years ago, it was a happening place. The same time on Earth, that's when life started. So did life start on Mars?

Now we notice that Mars doesn't have any atmosphere either and won't support life. In spite of the fact that it turns green and red and purple with the seasons, it doesn't support life.

I am confident that life once thrived on Mars and may well still exist there today.

You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on... So it's a fixer-upper of a planet.

Mars was this water-based planet, and we know there was stable water on the surface for a long time, which is critical for life having a chance to develop.

I like Wadi Rum - it's the best view I've ever seen of what could be Mars.

Mars has a bit of air pressure; maybe we can build up that atmosphere to be a bit more accommodating to humans.

Venus has a runaway greenhouse effect. I kind of want to know what happened there because we're twirling knobs here on Earth without knowing the consequences of it. Mars once had running water. It's bone dry today. Something bad happened there as well.

Just as Mars - a desert planet - gives us insights into global climate change on Earth, the promise awaits for bringing back to life portions of the Red Planet through the application of Earth Science to its similar chemistry, possibly reawakening its life-bearing potential.

Of all the planets apart from Earth in our solar system, Mars is the most hospitable. Yeah. Right. Better keep my visit short. And yet, despite the discomfort, the danger, I love it here. I love coming back for these imaginary vacations. The sights are amazing.

Mars has long exerted a pull on the human imagination. The erratically moving red star in the sky was seen as sinister or violent by the ancients: The Greeks identified it with Ares, the god of war; the Babylonians named it after Nergal, god of the underworld. To the ancient Chinese, it was Ying-huo, the fire planet.

Hearing, which, by the motion of the air, informs us of the motion of sounding or vibrating bodies.

When you hear a large symphony orchestra. for instance, in a concert hall, there's a big, sweeping sound that just doesn't get on to a record.

All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better.

The planet Mars - crimson and bright, filling our telescopes with vague intimations of almost-familiar landforms - has long formed a celestial tabula rasa on which we have inscribed our planetological theories, utopian fantasies, and fears of alien invasion or ecological ruin.

Antarctica is a paradise compared to Mars.

The Martian atmosphere is very thin. It's like our atmosphere at 100,000 feet.

My favorite place to go is Zabriskie Point in Death Valley. If you see it at sunrise and sunset, it's like you're on Mars.

Mars is not an aesthetic God.

Mars is essentially in the same orbit. Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water.

If you asked a sample of Americans "What is the temperature of Mars?" about 8% would say they don't know.

If no one heard your sounds then you did not really make them.

Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids, in fact it's cold as hell.