Seth Shostak on Colbert Nation Part III

that doesn't count. In science if you can't reproduce a result, it's not a result it's just "that was interesting"; I may tell you what the reaction of society might be because a lot of people may hear about it so what's an alarm, what's an absolute, what's a "yes, we found them"? you find a signal, you go back and look an hour later and it's still there you call up somebody, in another observatory, maybe halfway around the world and say:"you guys look" they look, they find the signal if you get enought people to do that then you can say, look... but what signal? what would constitute a ... you know... "howdy!" from space? what are you expecting? what kind of intelligence are you expecting to encounter? well, we're just looking for the kind of signal that transmiters make not the kind of signal that nature makes, quasars, pulsars, that kind of stuff... you're looking for the kind of signal that a television broadcaster... or maybe they use quasars and pulsars to send signals they're bad engineers if they do that because those signals are all over the band they don't have the signature of an artificial transmission so that's what we look for; what they're saying that's secondary first we have find out that they're "on the air" and then we can go back and pay attention to what, if anything they might be telling us what do you think this "people" are going to be like? I don't think they're going to be people, personally that's my point of view, but look,it's seems to be that the rate... aren't they going to be attractive? like the space ladies in bikinnis? like a ...llike in the movies I watched when I as a child? green skin? well yeah, we hope for that but the thing is... have you seen "Star Trek"? that's pretty good movie yeah now look, you invent radio, you go on the air then some years later you invent artificial intelligence so that's a short period of time I think the chances are not insignificant that they'd gone beyond biology that they're not some soft squashy guys that they are some sort of artificial sentient artificial intelligence they are... robots? robots? well, robots have arms and legs something that thinks that doesn't have arms and legs people with arms and legs might not think either right here Doctor, thank you so much for joining us the book is "Confessions of an alien hunter"