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Looking for signs of life in the Cosmos
Dr Seth Shostak, the chief scientist at SETI@home, sits in his office catching the signals and waiting to hear the signs of intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos.
His introduction to the worlds beyond Earth came when he was just eight year-old. “I recall that I was thumbing through an atlas in our dining room, and somewhere in that book I found a strange diagram consisting of a bunch of concentric circles. I asked my Mom what this was, and she said ‘those are planets — other worlds that go around the Sun.’ I thought that was quite interesting, and by age 11 I had built a small telescope and was trying to make photos of the moon.”
Dr Shostak recalls his childhood; “I grew up in suburbia, just a few miles from Washington, DC. It was a nice place for a child, because there was lots of space to play, and there were plenty of other kids. I developed many hobbies by the time I was 11 or 12, including, of course, astronomy, but also photography, making movies, and electronics. I’m still interested in all those things today, and they are helpful in my work. It was a good environment, and I have to confess that I was a bit lucky to have grown up in such encouraging circumstances.”
His parents always encouraged his interests. “I recall one particular event when I was about 6. My father bought me a dry cell battery and a bunch of wire. I used this to make electromagnets and to run small light bulbs. By age 8, I had established a telephone between my apartment and the apartment of my best friend, next door.”
His interest in astronomy is an old one. “As a college student, I majored in physics. Just as I entered graduate school, I changed my major to astronomy: it was of greater interest to me. Because of my background in electronics, I was quickly sucked into a field called ‘radio astronomy’ — the idea was to use big antennas to map out the structures of nearby galaxies. Sometime while I was doing my thesis observations, I realized that the equipment I was employing to study galaxies could also be used to communication between the stars. That kick-started my interest in SETI, although I didn’t actually do a SETI experiment for many years afterwards.
When asked if that was easy, he observed, “This is hard to answer, because anything you can do seems relatively ‘easy’. It’s just that sometimes such things take a long time!”
Academically, he was “always a pretty good student, although from my point of view, never good enough.”
He went to public schools in Virginia, where I grew up. They told me at the time that these were terrific schools, although looking back on them later, I wasn’t sure they were that terrific! For college, I went to Princeton University, in New Jersey. I got my doctorate from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), in Pasadena, California.
When asked how he approach ed SETI, Dr Shostak replied, “Actually, they approached me. In 1981, I had done my first SETI experiment together with Jill Tarter (who was the prototype for the Jodie Foster character in the movie Contact) while I was working at a university in Holland. About a decade later, after I had moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, Jill found out that I was around.
“Since the SETI Institute’s program was ramping up (this was in the days when it was a Nasa endeavor), she arranged to have me called up to see if I wanted a job. Which I did!”
When asked how he liked working for SETI, he replied, “It’s a privilege to be able to work on ‘big picture’ issues, in fact. The Institute itself is relatively small, but the people are both likeable and interesting, and that’s a big ‘plus’. I’ve been here for a dozen years, which I think is a testament to how interesting this work is. . . . And, of course, my work varies from day to day, so there’s variety. One of the big attractions is that I am always learning new things.
He admits he still have all those hobbies he developed as a child, and still enjoy them when he can. “There isn’t much time these days, with the heavy work load and all the travel that I do. But I still actively pursue photography and several other of my hobbies. They are relaxing, interesting, and occasionally even educational!
Dr Shostak does “quite a bit of teaching, mostly informal courses at local institutions such as the California Academy of Sciences. I also do a fair amount of writing for magazines. In addition, I’m involved with a new space centre that we hope to build nearby — something that would rival the big space museums in Washington, DC.
About the challenges of being at SETI, he has this to say:
“The biggest challenge these days is something that’s quite prosaic: finding the money to continue our work. It’s not realized by everyone, but for the last ten years, there has been no government money for SETI research in the United States. So we have to raise all our funding from private sources.
When asked if one gets too far removed from the real world when listening to the skies all the time, he disagreed and said, “I don’t think so. Just because you work on ‘big picture’ projects doesn’t mean that you lose sight of daily life!”
But is it easy to get into this profession for anyone? To this query Dr Shostak replies, “The biggest difficulty is the fact that this is a very small field. The total number of folks working full-time on SETI, worldwide, is probably less than three dozen. Most of these people have advanced degrees in astronomy, physics, or engineering. But it’s obviously a very niche employment area!
At SETI, the number of colleagues doing searches is about twenty. “Twice a year we go to the Arecibo radio observatory, in Puerto Rico, for several weeks’ worth of observing. But we’re also building a new telescope here in Northern California, and I sometimes go up to that observatory, as well.”
When asked if he had other dream to pursue, Dr Shostak said, “Of course! When you run out of dreams, you’re probably one step into the grave. I still would like to do more to help spread both the excitement and the results of science research. There’s very little that humankind does that’s as interesting.”
Since receiving his doctorate from the California Institute of Technology, Dr Shostak has spent more than a quarter-century studying the dynamics of galaxies and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. A distinguished lecturer for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, he speaks to popular and academic audiences about fifty times a year, and appears frequently on radio and television. He has written a popular book on the subject of extraterrestrial life — Sharing the Universe — and is currently co-authoring an undergraduate textbook on the same subject.
Dr Shostak has edited and contributed half a dozen books, including Sharing the Universe: Perspective on Extraterrestrial Life. He is frequently interviewed on The Discovery Channel, Learning Channel, and CNN News.
The writer
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