Profile: Michael Martin-Smith - author, Man Medicine and Space at www.amazon.com

Personal background
I am a 53 yer old physician in England. I am an amateur astronomer , space enthusiast, and writer/lecturer.

I have written numerous articles for magazines and newspapers, been translated into over 10 languages, and also a book, now in 2 languges- Italian as "Salto nello Spazio" and , in English, "Man Medicine and Space" at www.amazon.com
I have given papers at the International Astronautical Congresses and the IAU

I am convinced of the primary importance of Extraterrestrial Civilization - to be built by our own species. IF the SETI effort finds no ETI, then our role as the bearers of Mind in the evolving Universe is far too precious to remain confined to one fragile biosphere.
If we find others, then Humanity must take heart, and work to become worthy members of a "Galactic Club"

Whatever the result of our search, the Human future is either in Space, or with the Trilobites and Dinosaurs. The Choice is ours!
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
I believe that extraterrestrial life exists in many habitats - on a microbial level. Intelligent, science based civilization is a different issue. It has taken 3.8 billion years to make humans from microbes on Earth.
The Universe has passed through various stages of growing complexity -maybe it takes 13 billion years to grow an ETI?
Nature presents many obstacles to the emergence and development of Mind - cosmic impacts, GRBs, epidemics, climate change, volcanism,etc, and loss of the Will to expand. Thus, no civilization can communicate across the Universe for long unless it becomes space faring; we will probably find ETI by looking for evidence of large scale space engineering near target stars, or evidence of space probes launched by ETIs .
A benefit of success would be the existence proof of a future for Mind; the biggest danger might be that we would leave it all to ET!
SETatHome could lead to citizens' planetary defence/space programme - for without these, there is no longerm SETI!
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