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| Personal background |
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| UK born, but lived a bit more widely since, though back in the UK now. Use a Mac. Graduated from UMIST in Maths & French and was President of the students' union in 1985/86. Have worked in marketing, logistics & finance, mainly in Healthcare. Enjoy fun sports like skiing, snowboarding, scuba diving, mountain biking, running, swimming (and therefore also triathlon). Like to keep fit. Also a gadget addict! |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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My opinion:
1. Extraterrestrials definitely exist; how close to us in the universe they are is a completely different question. I don't think anyone can predict what the impact of discovering them could be, though I believe it is far more likely to be positive than negative. Hopefully it would stop a lot of humans from being so arrogant.
2. We should transmit a beacon, and information such as that on Voyager would be good.
3. I run SETI@home since I think that though the chances are remote of finding anything, if we do, the ramifications are so important to humanity and to me in particular, I have to help check it out. What I don't understand is exactly the checking process. Is SETI@home checking all possible communication methods using radio waves (e.g. I remember reading in New Scientist a few years ago about pulse radio transmissions that should be far more effective than AM or FM signals we tend to use, but would SETI@home spot such transmissions from an alien culture)? How do we expand the search to cover more of the sky, pick up more sensitive signals and also a wider frequency range? As our computers get more powerful, we should get more work to do for each unit. |
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