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| Personal background |
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This middle-aged computer geek, living in northwest Indiana, would rather sit in front of a computer than anywhere else. Information about this and my other hobbies can be found on my personal web site linked above.
I have always had an interest in space exploration and astronomy. I have a telescope with which I have taken pictures of some interesting things. You can find some of my astrophotos on the site mentioned above. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I believe that extraterrestrial life exists, but the probability of finding intelligent radio signals is extremely small. Anyone watching our solar system for intelligent signals as recently as 120 years ago would have found nothing, and 50 years ago there was nothing in the gigahertz range. Now we sit here with only about 100 years of radio experience behind us, and less than 50 years of gigahertz experience, guessing what sort of signals alien beings might try to send us. The likelihood of picking up signals from a civilization at the same stage of development as our own is negligible. Advanced beings would consider our technology ancient; surely they would have progressed to something we haven\\'t even begun to explore. I think the discovery of extraterrestrial life will require exploration by means other than listening for radio beacons.
Sending a signal for others to find probably wouldn\\'t be worth the time, trouble, and cost, not to mention the risk. We\\'ve seen plenty of examples of the hostilities people can wage against one another right here on our own planet. Why wave a flag saying \\"Here we are, right here!\\" when we have no idea what the intentions of an alien civilization might be? Travel over enormous distances appears impossible to us because we haven\\'t discovered a way to do it. A more advanced civilization may have conquered those barriers in ways that we cannot yet comprehend. We shouldn\\'t assume that the distance factor makes it safe to advertise.
I run SETI@home for the fun of participating in the world\\'s largest distributed computing project. The Berkeley SSL has done an excellent job of planning and implementing this project. Even though we aren\\'t likely to discover alien beings in this manner, we\\'re helping to compile a database of radio sources in space. This could prove useful to astronomers and cosmologists.
This project has brought together people from all over the world, working toward a common goal, and that\\'s worth the effort even if nothing useful comes from the data.
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