I always get fed up with the "scientists are doing this for the money" arguments of various pseudo-scientists / conspiracy theorists. For the level of education, intelligence and just damn hard work science requires it pays incredibly poorly. People enter and remain in science because it is a reward in its own right, the privilege of finding out things about the universe that were previously speculation or beyond imagination and for their chance to add their few inches to the height of the giants shoulders on which the next generation will stand to see further.

Sorry, that came across as a bit of a rant, but I'm a PhD student and had this very argument today with someone who does IT support for an investment bank and earns (at the same age) approximately 8 times my current income and more than I'm ever likely to earn at any stage in my career, they accused ME of living off the tax payer and not contributing any useful work.

Even if we don't find anything, that in itself is interesting in many ways.

Also, we are likely to find many other unexpected things along the way...


Happy crunchin',
Martin

But are we??? Im curious as after nearly ten years of crunching, I have no idea what has been achieved..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10959590

Has seti discovered anything by accident while searching for ET? After all these years and millions of wu's crunched, what has been the result?
Im not ranting, my credit shows Im serious, but Im curious as to what they might have found as a by product of the search for ET. If so, where would it be announced? Have they found anything?

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The answer is, they found lots of things. And they need to sort through those with different methods to determine WHAT they found. It could end up as nothing significant, or lots of things significant. Most likely something in between.

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Janice