I'm a lawyer, looking to sign up the first SETI personal injury case. Two headed critters would mean twice as many whiplash injuries...
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
If life on earth is unique it's a heck of a complex coincidence. I suspect we will discover life off our planet this century, either via exploration of the outer solar system or through ever more extensive versions of this kind of SETI program. I suspect the beacon idea wouldn't be very productive. A better idea is simply to continue to advance our technologies on all fronts, simultaneously sending out electromagnetic or other signals as artifacts of our civilization (for them to detect) and advancing our ability to detect both technological and biochemical signatures from interstellar distances.
I participate in SETI because I have several computers that are largely idle (no matter how much I use them) and this distributed scientific effort is one of the most significant that I could participate in.
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.
