| Personal background |
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I'm a IT Manager for a company in Walsall and I live in a small village in Staffordshire. Have lived here for 17 years. Came here to go to Polytechnic on an Computer Science degree course and have been here ever since.
I've worked in various roles during my time with IT, programming, networking, you name it!
I'm a licenced radio amateur, active on HF using PSK and APRS on VHF ( I run whats called an I-Gate).
I'd heard about Seti@home a long time ago but only recently started to run it when I started to get interested again in astronomy. One thing led to another (as things do on the net) and I found myself on the Seti website.
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| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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OK Lets answer the questions set here one by one.
1. "Do you think extraterrestrial life exists?"
I think its only human arrogance to deny the possibility of life on other worlds. Its possible we MAY be the only form of life (Personally I doubt it!) but we wont know without looking.
"When and how will humans discover it?"
Well we may already be known to out interstellar neighbours already. Lets face it we have been throwing all kinds of signals into the either for the last 100 years. But they may well have seen our soap operas and decided to let us evolve a better form of script! As with all the great human discoveries it will come down to sheer bloody minded effort mixed with a dash of luck.
"What are the possible benefits and dangers of such a discovery? "
The dangers? They may be hostile. The benefits? They may not be! The MAIN benefit will be that we will finally lose the illusion of being unique. I think that may well humble quite a few people (hopefully politicians and heads of state).
2. "Should we transmit a beacon for others to find?"
Why not? We're spending an awful lot of time and energy listening. It makes sense that if there is someone else out there they are probably doing the same. Lets give it a go and see if anyone picks up the handset and calls back.
"If so, what information should we send?"
Errm....Hi there...drop by for coffee? I dont feel qualified to answer this one! Whatever we send it must be simple to decode from the carrier. I just hope that when contact is made we as a race behave ourselves. Humans have a habit of trying to anihilate things that dont conform. History tells us that. I hope we have grown up a little more and dont become know as the galaxies "problem child"!
3. "Why do I run Seti@home?"
Simply because its my way of helping a larger cause, and I've also found that the other people running seti either singularly or in teams have common goals. I'm proud to call them all friends.
"Is the project worthwhile?"
Hell yes ! |
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