| Personal background |
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| I'm 42 and a journalist, although from about the age of 6 to 10 I wanted to become an astronomer ... and may yet someday. I'm married and have a young son and daughter. These days, my only hobby besides this and sleeping is my Weblog. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I think the odds that extraterrestrial life exists are overwhelming, although I suspect the odds that intelligent life exists with which we could communicate now are much lower. Certainly, any life able to communicate with us almost certainly will be more advanced than we technologically and, I would hope, in the ability of its members to get along with one another and with us. The danger, of course, is that it could be both more technologically adept and less mmorally advanced than we.
I think we should broadcast a beacon simply because if there is intelligent life out there, I want to know. I think the potential benefits of finding out far outweigh the risks, although I haven't done a strict cost-benefit analysis. Whatever we broadcast ought to be something simple and, presumably, universally understandable to any civilization able to recognize our beacon as a beacon. A short list of prime numbers (as in the movie "Contact"), or simply pi, probably would suffice.
I run SETI@home because these days it's the closest I can come to being the astronomer I once dreamed of being. That, and the screensaver looks cool.
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