| Personal background |
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I've just turned 40 and live in the historic town of Stratford-upon-Avon in the UK. I work in the insurance industry as a claims manager. My wife and I have been married for coming up to 18 years, have no kids but two cats!
I've been fascinated by space and astronomy from an early age. The product of growing up through the era of Apollo and Skylab. Coverage of these historic space missions was given a high profile in the UK long after the flights became "routine" in the mind of the US media. I can remember being allowed to stay up late to watch the moon landing of "Eagle", then going back to bed and being woken again for the moonwalk itself. Amazing to me even now. I also remember being taken to Jodrell Bank radio telescope in Cheshire (I grew up in Blackpool in Lancashire) and struggling to get to grips with the concept of how a radio telescope worked.
My other hobbies include watching cricket, collecting astronaut autographs and history (from Ancient Egypt to WW2). We have travelled to Egypt twice now and no doubt will return. There is nothing quite like gazing at the stars from an ancient site such as the pyramids or Stonehenge in the UK.
My remaining ambition (apart from finding the money to get out of insurance and into something more rewarding) is to see a Space Shuttle launch. We tried in 1999 but the flight was postponed over and over again, meaning I had to come back to the UK before the launch took place. May be one day............ |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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1. I find it inconceivable that there is not intelligent extraterrestrial life in the rest of the Universe. It seems to me to be the height of human arrogance to suggest that in all the wonder and beauty of the cosmos the only planet with life is ours and the only species at our level of development is us. The stupendous size of the universe seems to me to suggest that "meeting" others will not happen for 1000's of years. Even electronic "contact" by radio signal must take centuries to travel to a wide enough "audience" - whether originating from Earth or from a planet elsewhere in the cosmos. Even if we do find a signal it may have left it's point of origin so long ago that the originators will have changed or met their end as a species long before our message gets back there. Finding a signal, if we do, is going to be important more for how we will perceive ourselves as a species on Earth than for what we might meet or "converse with" in the wide universe I think.The complexities of communication and transference of concepts and ideas between cultures may also be unsurmountable, even if we could make remote contact in some way. After all, we can't understand or tolerate different cultures within our own species too well, so what hope for effective communication with a species that has no cultural or societal context in common with us??
2. We should transmit a beacon for others. Mathematically based. How about launching a beacon in the style of a Voyager craft and putting a set of discs about Earth on it too?
3. Great project, great to be able to contribute in a small way to science. Amateurs get cut out of most work nowadays but not with SETI@home! |
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