Profile: Neil

Personal background
I'm from the West of Scotland (that's the wee country in the top half of the United Kingdom). I'm 21 at the moment, and at university doing the fourth (honours) year of my Physics BSc. I've always been fascinated by the night sky, and dabbled a bit in amateur astronomy, but always been too busy to get more into it. Also done some work this year constructing a Cosmic Ray Telescope, which has worked well. Usually I'm working on a computer instead of getting out with the telescope, so SETI means I can work, and do my bit for science and astronomy at the same time.
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
I've not done much in the way of statistics in maths, but I know a little about probabilities from Physics, and it seems to me that out of all the stars, and the even potentially small percentage that have planets, and the even smaller percentage that have habitable planets, there must be something that we would determine as life. Who knows what it might be. We could be the most advanced beings in a universe of bacteria, or we could be the least advanced of dominant species on any planet.

As to when we will discover life, I wouldn't be so presumptious to try and say. I have my doubts that SETI will discover anything, but I am game if the other 3 million or more are. I reckon that some future project based on the original model of the SETI system will be what discovers life, if life is going to be discovered. The benefits of knowing that life exists and where it is will be the prime advantage. Tactically and conceivably commercially, it's good to know where possible threats and equally possible trade routes can be found. The main danger is that we find a nasty group of aliens that fancy a little hunting trip for the upperclass gentlemen.

The beacon is a difficult one. My gut instinct is to say this is a bad idea. We don't know what "bullets" are flying around the universe, and how advanced they are, so I don't like sticking my head out from behind the wall to find out.

I run SETI@home because I'm interested in the possibilities. I admire the vision of the scientists running the project and what's a little drop of processor time in giving them a hand? I think the project is great, but I do wish it could be expanded in range. Whether or not other beings would think to use that particular small range of frequency, I do not know. Ideally, we'd do a huge range of frequencies, but the logistics of that are near impossible I'd imagine. Bring on the quantum computing era and we might be able to give it a serious shot!
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