I'm a first year PhD student in physics at Georgia Institute of Technology.
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
I love the idea of SETI. It would be interesting to use the global concept to do other CPU intensive research.
I definitely think some kind of extraterrestrial life exist. I am not sure about intelligent life. It seems there would not be too much of a danger of discovering other life. However, it is what we do with that information that could be dangerous. I really think not knowning what else is out there is more dangerous than knowing. I am not so sure we should send out information for other life forms to find because we just do not know if it will be benevolent or not. It is better to err on the side of caution (whose quote?).
I run SETI probably for the same reason as everyone else. I think ETI is a real possibility and SETI is a great way to persue the search.
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.
