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| Personal background |
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| Allow me to introduce myself. My name is, as probably already know from the name field, Daniel Hur. I'm currently 20 years old and attend The University of Texas at Austin as an Economics major (considering double majoring in Japanese). Economics is probably as closely related to Astronomy as Literature is to Math, but my interest in the stars goes back to the days of my (earlier) youth; when every night, I used to gaze upon the crystalline sky of my hometown in Australia and wonder if I would ever journey into space. I may be doing economics now (having switched from Aerospace upon realizing how unsuited I am to the work) but I still wonder sometimes. Old dreams have a habit of dying hard... |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I'll do the typical in this field and comment on all three example topics.
Personally, I think extraterrestrial life exists. I think both more advanced species (compared to ours) and less advanced species exist "out there". The obvious benefits to the discovery of an advanced species are too numerous to list here. One only needs to look at any sci-fi show or read any sci-fi book to imagine the possibilities. As to answering the "when" question? Well, I think it's just a matter of time. Once discovery is made there will no doubt be a tremendous amount of time before actual physical contact can occur. If mankind as a species doesn't annihilate itself first, such a meeting should have tremendous effect on life on this planet.
Humans should (and IÂfm surprised that we havenÂft) set up some sort of beacon to announce our presence. Such a pin prick of a world would hardly be noticed otherwise. While the day to day activities of modern mankind do spew a fair amount of noise into the cosmos, I believe that a specialized beacon with a message of peace would be appropriate. Heaven forbid that a small mustachioed Austrian man named ÂeHitlerÂf be mankindÂfs representative!
Initially, I ran SETI@home to show my friends that my computer could churn out as many units as theirs. After a while, everyone else I know stopped but I continued. For a short while I employed SETI@home as sort of a ÂeswitchÂf to allow my computer to fall into standby mode or not. If SETI@home was running, the computer would not sleep. (I know the real way to disable auto standby but this was putting my computer to good work and I sometimes actually did want my computer to standby if I wasnÂft around.) Now, I run SETI@home just because IÂfm used to it. ItÂfs unobtrusive and makes use of otherwise idle CPU time. |
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