| Personal background |
| I'm a 26 year old Computer Technician, living in Bundaberg, QLD, Australia. I've been running SETI@Home since August 2000. Initially I didn't do a great deal of crunching and only ran the windows screensaver version for the first 6 months or so until I saw a doco on the SETI institute, which re-kindled my imagination. Also when I was able to use a couple of computers at work to help my stats I really got stuck back into it. Now I contribute over 30WUs per day for Team Overclockers Australia. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
Do you think that the human body can withstand the stress travelling at more than 30 miles an hour?
Back a 100 years or so, people said that this kind of speed was too much for the human body.
We got to the moon within 10 years of saying that it was impossible. Nothing is impossible. I'm sure that there is life of some sort elsewhere. The universe to too big to say otherwise. But because of that, whether or not intelligent life is close enough to hear our signals, or for us to pick up their's is less likely.
One thing which I think is hampering the entire human space exploration is that the world has changed it's collective morals vastly in the last few hundred years. Back in Columbus' days, he got in his boat and searched for another continent, it was years before anyone from his homeland heard anything about him, and the rest of the world was oblivious to his journey (ignorance is bliss). You could parallel that scenario with getting in a space ship and flying to Mars now. The only difference is that people know that you're going, and NASA doesn't want to send people to Mars and not be able to bring them back because of the public uproar that would ensue.
All the variables are the same between the two instances. Instead of going from Europe to America, we're going from Earth to Mars. Reasonably the same time frame 1-2 years turn-around, same dangers, there's a vast amount of nothing in-between, mighn't make it there, what do we find when we're there, is it possible to get back safely?
But with projects like SETI@Home and increased media coverage, these types of discussions can be voiced over a greatly increased population than was ever possible before. And the more the general public learn about it, the more they will support the space program and become excited about the scientific implications and possiblities that can come from such ventures into the unknown. |
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