Profile: Christopher Jordan

Personal background
I am from Marshall, Michigan, U.S.A., and am an info junkie.
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
1. I believe that extraterrestrial life exists, but it may take awhile to find, as most may be post-existence or not technologically advanced enough for us to detect. Perhaps once the xenobiologists get their new telescopes on-line, they may be able to detect signs of life from the atmospheres of some of these new planets that are being detected by stellar wobble and reflection of star light now. Benefits to humanity could be "hope" among other things. Life is not limited to Earth, and so would not perish if we did. Dangers would probably be social in nature. Those hard-line viewpoints of religion would probably regard it as an attack, or a trick, and may respond unpredictably and perhaps violently, rather than try to incorporate the discovery into the beliefs they already hold.

2. Humans should not transmit a beacon for others to find. It would be like sending an open invitation to all guests during the dark ages. You don't know whether you will be getting visitors who will be scientists and intellectuals, or con artists, or conquerors, or opportunists, or just others willing to use us for whatever purpose for awhile. We should not assume that a civilization advanced enough to detect and respond or visit would be advanced enough to not adhere to the higher motives. Our technology has often exceeded our social ability to handle it morally; it would be a mistake to assume they would be friendly or honorable simply because they could communicate with us or visit.

3. I run Seti@Home because it is the responsible thing to do. I want to help. There is not enough computing power to do the task correctly with a couple supercomputers. Distributed computing gives that power, and makes the task possible, and opens new options for search. I believe that this project has merit, but needs to expand to all practical wavelengths/bands for communication over distance (or even over just those wavelengths for internal communication), whether they be radio, X-ray, light, or other. More than just Areciebo nee
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