I'm 28 and I'm a policeman in Victoria, Australia. I was also in the Army for almost 10 years. I enjoy my family, computers (obviously) cycling, camping and most of all LIFE.
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
1. I believe extraterrestrial life may exist (but not as we know it). Lets face it there are a lot of Stars out there and we can't possibly be the only sentient being in all of them.
2. Humans may discover other life forms either by what we are trying to achieve or if the extrterrestrials rock up on our door step and actually say G'day.
3. Benefits of a discovery will be that we will actually know the answer to if we are alone or not and hopefully some technological advances. The disadvantages will be if we can't avoid going to war with them because of our own insecurities.
3. We already have sent a beacon out to space on satelites and radio/television waves. That should be enough. We're not ready to start encouraging contact with a beacon.
4. I think SETI@HOME is a great idea to use idle computer time constructively however I believe the users should get more feedback on what they are reporting to SETI@HOME and double or triple packets should be sent to minimise dialup conections. I also would love to believe that SETI@HOME would tell us if we discovered ET however I don't think the Governments of today would allow that.
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.
