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| Personal background |
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I am the science officer for Starbase 17, the oldest Star Trek fan club in Iowa, located in Des Moines. (We have a team on here.)
Latest news: I have completed 2000 SETI work units as of Fri Sep 12 16:07:22 2003!
The picture depicts me at the 2003 edition of Trek Fest (a county fair with a little ST thrown in), held in Riverside, IA the last weekend of June, standing in front of their replica of a Constitution-class cruiser they call the U. S. S. Riverside, NCC-1818.
I was/will be conceived in Terran year 2203, but my mother was thrown backward in time 250 years before I was born so I was born in 1953 (SD 05312.16.1555, Dallas, TX, USA, Sol 3).
I am retired, occupation-wise; besides Star Trek and SETI@Home, I enjoy chess (USCF Class B), bridge, computers, travel, pyrotechnics, and freedom from the encumberance of body covering, especially on the feet (including operating motor vehicles). |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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It would be foolish to assume that this is the only planet in the universe on which sentient life exists.
Assuming that other civilizations evolve along the same path as we did, we have a very narrow window of opportunity to discover them: namely the period between their use of television and FM radio broadcasting and their discovery of more efficient methods of signal propogation such as cable transmission. Plus, we have to be only a few parsecs away from them to receive their signals. No wonder we haven't found anything as of yet!
Benefits: contact with an extraterrestrial civilization, exchanging information with them; dangers: they may not like us and may respond in a hostile manner, or may decide to subjugate us.
I think we should transmit a beacon periodically (as often as funding allows) stating where and who we are, along with some of the amino acids, using the excited and neutral states of hydrogen as reference points.
Why do I run it? Because I like the idea!
Do I think it will find anything? No, for the reason I stated above: the window of opportunity is too narrow. I would be overjoyed if we did find something, however.
Suggestions: Add the "/sleep t" ("t" = number of seconds between tries to send or receive data, default = 3600 (1 hour)) parameter, as in the OS/2 version, to the Winbloze and Linux (among others) versions of SETI@Home (either graphic or Command Line (which is what I use)); make an option that gives only the percentage completed without all the other FFT gobbledygook; and assign the most time-consuming work units to the fastest machines (based on average time per work unit). |
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