Profile: Jim Franklin

Personal background
Time for an update - 14/05/2019 (UK date format)

I am a 52 year old Electrical Engineer, I have a first in Astronomy and a post Doc in High Energy physics. Currently undergoing Chemo and Radiation therapy for a brain tumour and "cancer indicators" in my blood..it's bloody awful, but not as awful as ignoring it and being dead!

I have visited 94 countries in total, most 3rd world and this is a sobering experience as it makes you realise that no matter how bad things get, there is always some poor sod far worse off that I will ever be.

I own Land Rover's as they allow me to get telescopes into places other vehicles simply cannot get to - owned them for 29 years now and on No 8 now. I adapt them myself when I have time, do all my own servicing and even replace engines when necessary

I have two gorgeous kids, Lucy is 10 and Max is 9.

My hobbies are Astronomy, technology and the Earth Sciences. I have a passion for high technology -if I seem in a dream I am likely thinking about science or technology..
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
Does life exist elswhere? If it doesn't then nature really screwed up here.

Does Technically Advanced life exist elswhere? Without a doubt, the chances of Man being the only civilisation to reach this level of technology are staggeringly small in my opinion.

Will Humans ever detect a signal from Aliens? Personally I do not think we stand a snow balls chance in hell of detecting an artificial signal from an advanced race for many practical reasons that I won't go into here. I do not think SETI at Home will succeed in it's very laudable ambition, however, to not try is to accept defeat without investigation and that would be criminal. Afterall what I believe could be wrong, or perhaps we could simply get get lucky and catch KlingonFM's drive time show!

My thoughts on the project? As above really, although I do think that more thought needs to be given to the users of the project as without them it would not exist. I sometimes think that the Team in Berkeley get so caught up in their work they forget about the grunts producing the results. BOINC is a great improvement over classic seti in many ways, but they need to to stop releasing buggy versions of the code as it simnply turns people off the project.

Any suggestions? Raise funding for the continuous transmission of a dedicated signal in all directions. If everyone is listening and no-one is transmitting then we're all doomed to dismall failure regardless of what I personally believe. This signal should be simple, and consist of a repeating transmission of the first 100 prime numbers. Nothing natural could do that so it would be obvious to anyone capabale of recieving it.

Such a transmission should not be restricted to the "Water Hole", but should be a wide frequency broadcast from long wavelength radio to very high frequency Microwaves in excess of 10GHz.

It would be a lighthouse declaring our presence and then hopefully I would be proved wrong..someone would reply, maybe with the next 100 prime numbers to grab our attention!
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