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| Personal background |
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I am a 53 year old Mechanical Engineer from Sydney, Australia. I have a wife and 3 kids, 20, 19 and 6. I work for Sydney Water and my main occupation is vibration analysis, which is part of the Preventive Maintenance programme. I also do hydraulic testing of Water and Sewage Pumping Stations.
I grew up with Meccano as a principal hobby. I also liked brick city, petal craft and board games. I have been interested in Astronomy since 1967 when someone from NASA came to the school and showed us some models of rockets. Of course it was just two years before the moon landing. At school, my favourite subjects were Mathematics and Science. That is still true today. I also play the piano, having learnt for 10 years whilst at school.
I have a 4" Bausch and Lomb Criterion 4000 Telescope and I belong to Sutherland Astronomical Society. It is a very active group and has interests in SETI, Deep Sky, Planets, Variable stars etc. We have a public lecture every month, usually given by a visiting expert speaker. We had a field trip to Ceduna to view the Total Solar Eclipse. It was pure magic!
My homepage is http://home.thirdage.com/astronomy/m31 |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I have a competitive streak. Processing SETI data seemed a worthwhile thing to do. I realised one day that I had processed more data than 85% of users. With a faster computer and now a cable connection as well, I have pushed that to beyond 97%. I joined the Astronomy Now group where I currently sit at 29th out of 458.
I think it is likely that ET exists. It seems a big universe for just us. I believe we were created and it does not seem beyond probability to suppose that God could have created other beings. Unless ET visits us and makes him/herself known to us we can only rely on recognition of coherent signals from space - whether sent intentionally or randomly. The obvious benefit, assuming the contact was two way, would be sharing technology. Only those more advanced are likely to be contactable. Of course if ET was hostile it would present a huge danger. However, such a danger would unite the world as never before - I just hope we would survive to enjoy that rapport. There is no way of knowing how soon such a signal might be detected.
If we hope to receive a signal, it is logical to send one as well. Random signals are too weak to go very far and we want to send something more in keeping with our level of scientific achievement than a randomly selected TV or radio program.
I think we should send something simple first to get their attention and then follow it up with information about us and our place in the universe - such as was sent on the Voyager spacecraft.
I run SETI@home to assist the Planetary Society of which I am a member and for a sense of personal satisfaction. It would also be very exciting to be the one whose computer processed the first verifiable signal. The distributed computer network is a brilliant idea on someone\\'s part. It could be used for any kind of research that requires a lot of number crunching.
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