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| Personal background |
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| I am the Mathematics Department Chair for Mount St. Clare College in Clinton, Iowa; a position I have held since 1983. I turn 49 years old in November and I am married with no surviving children (my son died in April 2001). Obviously, I am interested in space research as well as space fantasy (I have the entire collection of Star Trek movies) and love to "play" with computers. My other interests include photography (no I didn't take the posted picture of myself), electronic "gadgets", and inline skating. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I started running SETI@home after seeing an article about it in Popular Science about 2 years ago. The project ties together a number of concepts for me. First, I find it difficult to believe that Earth is the only planet on which intelligent developed. Second, I like the idea of computers being pooled to accomplish a major task. The distribution of tasks like in SETI@home is a very intelligent way of utilizing the computing power that is now available in personal computers. Third, it seems a total waste to have thousands of personal computers "flying" Windows icons when they could be accomplishing something.
If there is intelligence on other planets, then one has to wonder at what stage of development they are. Is it possible that they are thousands or millions of years ahead of us? We could conceivably cure our diseases, end birth defects, grow unlimited supplies of food, eliminate pollution, etc., by tapping into a civilization that has already solved those problems. I'll let the pessimists worry about the dangers of such an encounter.
It would be interesting to send at least one "beacon" satellite to transmit a signal for others to find. It is possible that a more advanced civilization would be able to monitor a wider spectrum of signals on a larger scale than we can and therefore the probability of contact would be greater. One can only hope... |
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