Transcript for Seth Shostak on Colbert Nation Part I

My guest tonight

Is here to talk about hunting for aliens in outer space

I say we keep them out of the space wall

please welcome Seth Shostak!

Seth Shostak, thanks for coming on

look what we've got here, the name of your book

is "Confessions of an Alien Hunter"

..."a scientist's search for extraterrestrial life"

you're an alien hunter so tell me how many

aliens heads do you have on the wall of your tent? anything?

it's pretty bare I have to say

not yet, not yet, but within two thousand years that answer might change

or within two thousand years you wouldn't be there, you never know

in which case ...

it's very hopefull to say that eventually I would hunt that snipe

they may not exist

in which case your life is meaningless

no offense, I'm just laying it out there man

I'm glad

you could just be... you know... pissing in the wind here

could be, Stephen, but look at this way, there are trillion planets on our galaxy

that's a vast number

says you

it's in your interest to think that

yeah, maybe it is but the astronomers...

I have a lot of astronomers who are backing me up on that

now, most of them are going to be pretty worthless...Neptune, Mercury...pretty worthless

but in a trillion planets some of them are going to be ok

some are going to be something like the Earth

unless this is a miracle, you think this is a miracle?

I do think this is a miracle

created by God in six days

yes my friend

that what I call a miracle, ok?

that's one of the things that bugs me about this is why

why, you know is science just continues to make mankind insignificant

I mean, we used to be...we were just like Jerusalem was the center of the world

on old maps and the Earth was the center of the Universe, then the Sun was the center of the Universe