| Personal background |
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Vietnam-era military veteran (3 years US Army, 4 years US Air Force) who somehow never got to Vietnam until after our military involvement ended; retired broadcaster (25 years); motorcyclist (Honda VT1100C Shadow Spirit); computer hobbyist (Windows 2000 and Linux), Type 2 diabetic (on oral medication).
I'm a science fiction fan because the genre is based on the premise that there will be a future -- maybe not the sort we expect, but a future nonetheless.
I'm a talk-radio fan because, after too many years in the booth, it's nice to hear someone else taking telephone calls that don't all ask to hear "Free Bird" or "Stairway To Heaven".
I'm a cat lover because -- well, if you don't already understand why people like cats, you wouldn't understand anyway.
I'm a news junkie for the same reason I'm a Christian: in both cases, I want to know about things beyond my personal experience. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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The universe is a big place; statistically there *must* be life beyond our planet. Some of it is probably older than life on Earth, some of it is probably younger. None of this necessarily means that extraterrestrial life exists that is more advanced than human civilization, but if I were to wager that's where I'd put my money.
Even if there is advanced extraterrestrial life, that would not be a guarantee that they would be able to exceed "Einstein's speed limit", i.e. the speed of light. And if they can't travel faster than light, why not just use radio waves (which travel at the speed of light) instead -- as we're doing now?
Alternate hypothesis: An advanced extraterrestrial civilization has discovered a way to travel faster than light; but they still can't be everywhere at once, so they use their own version of seti@home to locate likely places to explore. Eventually they'll find us, if we don't find them first.
Meanwhile, we risk nothing (and stand to gain a lot) by listening for signals from extraterrestrial intelligences. So why not do what we can? |
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