I am 19 years old and from the UK. I am going to be starting my masters degree in Astronomy, Space science and Astrophysics in September. I enjoy Star gazing and soon i want to take up astrophotography. I have been interested in astronomy since i was very young and have always believed that we are not alone in the universe.
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
I do believe that there is life elsewhere in the universe. Consider that there are more stars in the visable universe than grains of sand on planet earth and anyone with a bit of comon sense would conclude that the chances of us being the only life to have evolved would be zero tending to nill. I think that when we discover an alien signal it will radically alter our perceptions of the universe for the better. I belive that humanity will stop all this pointless fighting as they will have a common goal to work for and that is contact with an alien race. We must consider though that we are relatively young in comparison to the age of the universe so any technologically advanced species could have been in existance for millions of years or more. They would have probably evolved beyond the senseless fighting that goes on on earth. They may see us as primative and may be trying to keep us from contact until we have earnt the right to communicate with alien species. Also, we may not be receiving transmissions because we may be looking in the wrong place. If an alien species has been around for millions of years thay may have discovered a way of faster-than-light communications and travel. I know relativity says that this is impossible but relativity applies to three dimensional space and string theory states that there are at least 10 spacial dimentions and maybe one of these permits faster-than-light travel. If this is the case then we are looking in the wrong place. If not then it's only a matter of time before contact.
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.
