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| Personal background |
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| I'm originally from Germany, and I've lived all over the U.S. I'm currently a junior (soon to be a senior) majoring in computer engineering at Penn State. In my free time, I love to mountainbike (recreationally and racing, XC, DH, trials, urban), read sci-fi and fantasy books, play with my computer, work on my '71 Super Beetle, and spend time with my girl |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I'm a firm believer that ET exists. If we do manage to find it, I'm assuming we'll find it on an exploration mission once we've solved the problem of travelling the vast distances in a somewhat efficient manner. We may also find evidence of past civilizations on other planets in other systems. However, I believe that unless the world gets its act together as a whole, we may end up destroying ourselves and becoming a civilaztion of ruins for the elusive ET to find instead. At this current point in time, if we were to be able to contact ET or have ET visit, I believe that the aggressive nature of certain leaders might possibly trigger a preemptive strike, perhaps out of fear of the unknown, or perhaps because they're not getting any (who knows why some people do the things they do). Ideally we would be peaceful and share our information with each other, and further our goals of a more civil society with better standards of living for everyone.
As far as whether or not we should transmit a beacon or not... let's assume there are ET lifeforms which are transmitting one of these beacons. Unless it's extremely powerful, it's like trying to see a lit match from 100 miles away, and not knowing where the match is even supposed to be. Nonetheless, thanks to some very curious minds, we are conducting this search through the SETI program. Should we transmit a beacon? Sure, why not... we're scanning passively right now for other beacons, we might as well try our luck the other way around, too, in hopes that a curious group of lifeforms on another planet are searching the skies for signals.
I'm running SETI@Home because I've always had an interest in the SETI program, and this is a very small way I can help out. The government has been reducing the funding for scientific programs such as this (which never received very much money to begin with), so anything we can do to help out peers of a like mind is beneficial. |
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