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| Personal background |
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British ex-pat from London living in Belgium.
IT consultant. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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1. Does ET life exists? For sure. But is it advanced enough to transmit radio? Very unlikely. Our galaxy is probaly teeming with life - on every planet that has liquid water. But take a look at Earth's history. There's been life here for billions of years and there's only been radio transmissions for a hundred. It is often assumed that evolution naturally leads to creatures like us - intelligent tool makers - with ever advancing technology, but this is a falacy. Evolution's only tendency is to devlelop whatever survives - that's all. And even with us, we have been "intelligent" creatures for thousands of years, but never developed radio until very recently. The Romans were the highest form of human civilization for a thousand years, but their technology hardly advanced at all. Then the factors that led to humans were very unusual conditions, not likely to be repeated anywhere. Nature can get on quite well without creatures like us, thank you very much.
Having said that, the chances of another hi-tech civilization existing now, or in the recent past, is low, but not zero. That's why we should look - just in case.
2. Should we transmit a beacon? Well they'll see us anyway because of our ordinary transmissions. But if they are very far off, we may no longer be here when they get it. Is it dangerous? Maybe.
3. Why do I run SETI? Well you never know, and it's nevertheless interesting. |
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