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| Personal background |
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| I am a human male with no known direct links to any ape-like relatives. I do not climb trees, have a banana craving, or go ook! I teach scuba diving in Aqaba, Jordan, do some programming, fly gliders and shoot ISSF Free Pistol and Air Pistol. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I think that life must exist elsewhere, it is just that there is a lot of empty space between the interesting bits, and no signposts saying 'this way to sentient life form and picturesque blue planet (mostly harmless)'.
We should continue listening, probably with a VLA based on the far side of the moon, near the lunar poles (not too far to lead cables to a transmission base pointed toward Earth).
SETI is an interesting beginning in global cooperation. It already has spawned other distributed computing projects in life sciences research, so it has proved itself a benefit to mankind in other ways than originally intended.
I think that SETI has a good basic data feed, but that the current plane of data acquisition (along the Earth's equator) should be discontinued in favor of search paths based on the Galactic plane. Simply put; we should be searching through the Galaxy, and that has a different axial plane from our planet.
I would like to see a research project that would theorize upon the future methods of communication. It might shine a light on what signals we really should be looking for right now. Previously, we have communicated in analogue forms, and currently we are looking for simple pulse trains: Perhaps we should be looking for other ways that advanced civilizations might have been using, having discarded their 'older' methods? This would provide potential return on the research by providing viable, directed development - the aliens did it, so can we!
Here's a thought on funding current and future developments: Consider the Allen Telescope Array as an example... Telescopes are made of little bits, sub-assemblies, concrete pads, nuts and bolts, fiber optic cable runs, power cable runs, ducting, earthworks, bases, az/el pointing heads, dish, horn, sensor, correlator, data storage, data reduction, signal processing - the list goes on. My first point is that these are little units, and little units could be explicitly sponsored by the little individual, with the reward being that their name is directly attributable to a physical object. We no longer ask for monetary support for a nebulous mass; we provide a tangible return on investment that is far more rewarding than a donation certificate. Fancy turning up for a tour of a telescope and finding your name somewhere on it! Now that would be something, eh? |
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