|
| Personal background |
|---|
There is copious personal information about me on
my professional page
(which links to my
personal page,
etc.). I am a computer scientist and an amateur scientist. I like
challenges, physical and mental. I delight in all there is still to
explore and create and continue to
dream about
the possibilities. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
|---|
I do think extraterrestrial life exists. The numbers seem pretty clear in
terms of available opportunities for developing life elsewhere.
I'm not sure when intelligent life on this planet (human or not) will discover
extraterrestrial life, but at the expontential rate our technology is
increasing I would say pretty quickly (e.g. within 100 years) if we don't
have a serious accident (e.g. another large asteriod or some serious self
inflicted damage - both unlikely in my opinion). I do believe we should be
trying to send out beacons. I believe they should be offers to exchange
information. They should include a little about us (e.g. pictures and such
that are easily decoded), but little that we have discovered (e.g. DNA
encoding, etc.). We should offer to trade such information. We could
benefit from information that we might get back - information that could
take us huge amounts of time and energy to develop ourselves. The only
danger I see in making extraterrestrial contact is if we give away too
much too soon that we end up benefiting little. There seems no physical
danger because any extraterrestrial life will be too far away for physical
contact. Even light contact is likely to be so slow as to have little
benefit - except of course learning that we aren't in fact alone and a little
about our celestial neighbors.
I run SETI to benefit the project with spare cycles - though there is
now good competition for those spare cycles. I think SETI@Home is a
great concept that is working well. I wish it luck with the transition
to its next phase - whatever that might be.
In terms of suggestions, it seems to me the piggy back business at
Arecebo produces a pretty poor signal for analysis - at least in terms
of its pointing direction. It seems to me clear that if "we" are serious
about looking for extraterrestrial life we should focus in our own
galactic plane (the Milky Way) and in satelite galaxies (e.g. Andromeda).
Of course the problem is getting funding to get a better sig |
| Your feedback on this profile |
|---|
| Recommend this profile for User of the Day: |
I like this profile |
| Alert administrators to an offensive profile: |
I do not like this profile |
|
|
