Profile: Terence Chua

Personal background
I'm a long-time science and science-fiction enthusiast, and have been interested in SETI ever since being brainwashed by Carl Sagan's COSMOS series in my childhood. My hobbies include comic books, writing and performing songs for myself and the science-fiction community, military history and of course, computers. Having graduated from Queen Mary, University of London with a law degree in 1994, I live and work in Singapore as a civil servant.


Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
I think that it's incredibly arrogant to believe that in the vastness of the universe - 20 billion light years being only the *visible* limit, mind you - that we're the only form of intelligent life. Even taking the time needed for worlds capable of supporting life to form and time needed for a civilization to arise, we've already gone far beyond the time limits needed. We've already discovered that planets aren't as rare as we thought. Can life-bearing planets (and life doesn't necessarily mean our kind of life) be far behind? Skeptics, to my mind, think way too small.

SETI is a worthwhile endeavour - but I think we should be shouting out as well as listening. After all, if everyone was just listening, it wouldn't be much of a conversation, would it? I know TV and radio signals are out there, but it'd be nice if the first thing our neighbours got from us wasn't a re-run of "Three's Company".

As for SETI@Home... well, I've been at this for 2 years now and obviously found nothing. People may think it's futile, looking for the Wow! needle in the cosmic haystack, but I look at it this way: Every Bit Counts. If it makes the job easier for the SETI folks, I'm all for it, and I'll keep doing it as long as it's helpful.

Someday we'll hear what we've been waiting for. All the matters is that we keep listening.
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