I live in British Columbia Canada. I am 42 years old. I work as a computer technician and love to play racing games on my pc. I am a huge fan of Science Fiction. I think that Star Trek the Next Generation could be shown and taught as a college sociology course. I am nowhere near as geeky as I sound. I have extremely long hair and look like a bike type. I remember vividly being glued to the TV as Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon and knew at the time (even as an 8 year old) that this was a truly historical event. I've always been fascinated with the cosmos and have read the book by Carl Sagan. I believe Stephen Hawking's brilliance is totally not understood by most and that he is one of history's great minds. Anything extraterrestrial fascinates me.
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
I do believe in extraterrestrial life and Carl Sagan said it best that because of the trillions and trillions of possible stars that may have habitable planets orbiting them, the chances of life not existing elsewhere by shear fluke is unimaginable. I have absolutely no idea or even guess of when we will discover it but believe that when we do find it life will most certainly bear no resemblence whatsoever to our form. I don't believe that life will resemble ET or and even vaguely humanoid form. For hundreds of millions of years life on this planet was nothing like what we look like now. To think that life elsewhere even remotely resembles us is hugely egotistical and preposterous.
Yes I believe we should transmit a beacon (don't we already with continuous TV and radio broadcasts?). We should send the message that we are not totally about what you see on CNN.
I run SETI@home because I want to contribute to finding life not of this planet quicker and every computer that can help crunch the numbers makes finding that life happen quicker. The project is a brilliant idea. Good luck to all.
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.
