| Personal background |
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Born early in 1963. Into computers from an early age being the son of a math/cs type as well.
Degree in physics, but employed in the computer industry.
Strong interests in AI, astronomy, fractals, photography, and making the world a better place for all who inhabit her.
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| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I'm certain extraterrestrial life exists. We'll likely find evidence of primitive life elsewhere within our solar-system and/or strong circumstantial evidence for life beyond our solar system within the next few decades.
But as much as I admire and support the SETI@Home effort, I don't expect it to find a signal from ET on this go-around.
Reason: The sheer amount of stuff out there suggests to me that the probability of extraterrestrial life approaches 1.
On the other hand, the miniscule amount of time that we've been a radio-broadcasting life-form coupled with the rate of technological advancement we're currently experiencing suggests to me that the vast majority of extraterrestrial life is either very primitive or very advanced by our [human] standards. Either way, they're probably not emitting radio in ways we're likely to detect.
Consider that to make the most efficient and secure use of transmission bandwidth, we employ compression and encryption techniques. These techniques result in signals that generally appear to be "noise" unless you know the appropriate technique for decompression and decryption.
It could be that we're being bathed in strong ET signals that we simply don't know how to interpret because they appear to be just so much noise.
In short, I think the probability of an ET with technology "similar" enough to our own to be detected in this way also being within earshot approaches 0.
That said, we still have to look and as we look, think about ways to improve the sophistication of our searching techniques.
The short-term payoff will come from the spin-offs of the effort.
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