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| Personal background |
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My uncle smuggled a 115mm refractor out of Germany and gave it to me for my seventh birthday (1947) and I have been studying the sky ever since. I have been an avid amateur astronomer for 56 years. I began my working career in the aerospace industry as a technical writer and illustrator in 1956 but was taken by another love affair with the sea and became a naval architect and yacht designer in 1965. I worked in that industry for 28 years. "Retired" to Mexico where I became involved in astronomical societies and societies for the popularization of science and astronomy. Lectured at many schools to increase interest in the sciences. I found my interest in NEOs/PHAs, Mars, and possible life in the universe were topics children, adolescents, and adults could all become charged up about--but, in particular, it was the potential of life that stirred them most. I work now as a substitute teacher in a small school district in New Mexico, primarily in math and science, and write science fiction novels and other strange stuff. Retired from the teaching and now spend my time writing. Yay! Two novels to be released soon...XENOGENESIS and SEEDS OF MEMORY. Scads of short stories on the Web.
Visit my writing page: http://geocities.com/orbitaldata/jwrites.html
There are links there to my personal pages and my science page (taking forever to complete). |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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Life, based on the size and diversity of our universe, I think is a given--a common occurence wherever a planet (or satellite about a larger planet) of reasonable size and mass orbits a star within what we call the "life zone" and has the prerequisites (age, water, atmosphere conducive to life, etc.) to sustain it. Whether intelligence is commonplace is problematic. I suspect it is considerably more rare--but then that's why we are doing this SETI@home business, right? Whether we discover ETI in the radio frequencies, in the light frequencies, or through any of the more esoteric astronomical methods is another story. The search must be done and that is a sign of intelligence in and of itself--to reach out into the unknown is what makes discovery happen.
I am a firm supporter of colonizing other worlds--the moon and Mars first--to spread humanity out for the sake of preserving our species. One day, and we don't know when that day will come--only that it will, we will be visited by an object that can bring an end to our existence and I would like to know we will go on after that happens. We won't survive if we are all still here. Our destiny is to explore, so let's go exploring. That is what SETI@home is doing right now, and that's why I'm doing my minuscule part. It is irresistable--the urge to find out what lies over the next hill and beyond. Whenever I mention that I am in any way connected to SETI I can hear the oooOOOOooo pass through the minds of those with whom I am speaking. Does that bother me? Not in the least.
Won first place in the Pioneer Division of an essay contest sponsored by the Mars Society for my essay, WHY MARS? |
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