Shostak's Picnic

SETI's Seth Shostak, talking to SPACE.com, says results from NASA's Kepler spacecraft might suggest Earth-like worlds are as "common as ants at a picnic," but that still doesn't mean life is necessarily abundant.

First, some Earth-sized worlds Kepler finds might turn out to be "false positives." Beyond that, an Earth-like world doesn't guarantee life exists there. Far less guarenteed is the existence of intelligence. Of course, SETI works on the assumption that technological intelligence with the ability to beam radio signals might exist among the stars.

Some SETI researchers also work with Kepler, so they had advance knowledge of the Kepler data announced by NASA last week. The SETI Institute's Allen Array is already being aimed at some of Kepler's candidates.