| Personal background |
|---|
I'm older than I feel. I live in rural Oregon on a small farm which is just
big enough to use all my time and energy. I was raised in a small town in
Southern California. The view out our front window was of Palomar Mountain.
We couldn't see the Observatory there, but I had a close relative who was an
engineer who worked on that massive mirror. I'm sorry he died before Hubble
made orbit.
Our small farm includes 15 acres of carefully managed timber and 6 acres of
land under cultivation. We emphasize "heritage" breeds of livestock and
plants. We're unhappy and fearful that the loss of genetic variety, especially
in food crops, will be, literally, the death of us. So odd looking tomatoes,
sheep with up to six horns (Jacob), and poultry of various hues and designs
decorate the landscape like laundry blown off the line by the wind.
I've run Seti on my slow computer(s) almost from its
inception. Although I hope we find something, I
participate largely because it puts to use a vastly
under utilized resource. I hope other not-for-profit
research projects will compete for available computer time. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
|---|
I can't imagine, given the immense scale of the Universe,
that life of some kind doesn't abound. I have no illusions
that even a majority of it is bipedal or humanoid. The
only danger our discovering it might pose is a blow the our
egos and perhaps the reordering of organized religion.
Given the cost and the human tendency to build things but
not maintain them, our efforts and treasure would be used
better to locate others' beacons and then transmit to them.
What to broadcast: evidence that we have time to amuse
ourselves and engage our boundless curiosity. A sampling of
our music, a dictionary of our principle languages, and a
summary of our assumptions about nature and the Universe,
together with some photos of our home. Nothing that boasts
of our "accomplishments."
One suggestion: we have older computers which we still
use (no bells or whistles and slow) which we would happily
leave running if a version of the program was available.
I suspect that many schools, stuck with older machines,
would be willing to devote the 16 hours a day to SETI that
students aren't around if a program would run on them.
Graphics not required.
It's not |
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