|
| Personal background |
Since I was about ten years old (what is now about 30 years ago...) I have been interested in Astronomy. This is still true to that very day, it even got worse. I am active in the Astronomy Club Krefelder Sternfreunde, travel with friends to observations abroad and to Star Parties regularly etc. Since I visited Namibia in 1986 because of Halley's Comet, I'm not only addicted to the southern sky but to Southern Africa generally. So every year since then I visited Namibia and / or South Africa, several times even with my telescope.
I got in contact with computers in the late 70's, when you really couldn't call these boxes computers. But I loved these things that do exactly what you wanted them to do - only that most of the time you don't tell them correctly. Nowadays I work as a Software Developer, so I made my hobby to my profession.
About twenty years ago I started to write software programs to calculate and display what the sky looks like, and today I even sell this software Skyplot. So it's a logical step to use my machines to help SETI@home. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
Think about the discoveries in the recent years: The formation of planetary systems and planets itself. Through better observation methods smaller and smaller planets have been discovered, and it is just a matter of some years until we will find planets of Earth's size in the inhabitable zone around Sun-like stars. I am not sure about the traces of ancient life in this meteorite from Mars found in Antarctica, but I'm quite sure that we would find traces of ancient life on Mars itself, if we would search thoroughly enough. All statistics and common (scientific!) sense tell that there has to be life outside Earth.
How "developed" is it? How "developed" is mankind, if you think about what happened in New York and Washington D.C. on Sept. 11th 2001 (yesterday, when I write these lines)??
Can we communicate with them, and do they want to communicate with us? How long will the signals travel? If there is somebody in range, will they still exist when our answer reaches them, and will we still exist when they answer us?
There are so many questions, but if Columbus wouldn't have sailed towards West, we would still be asking questions in Europe. So let's try everything, no matter how tiny the chance to find something or somebody even is! |
| Your feedback on this profile |
| Recommend this profile for User of the Day: | I like this profile |
| Alert administrators to an offensive profile: | I do not like this profile |
|
|
