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| Personal background |
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Greetings! I'm a computer programmer, age 47, originally a "NASA Brat" from Texas, but am now working from home here in the Atlanta area. I telecommute to a smallish software firm in New Orleans. Hey, you can't beat the commute, and there's only 1 time zone difference! I am currently running setiathome on 4 machines: a 1.8GHz P4 laptop running Win 2k, a 866MHz P3 desktop machine running Linux, a 650MHz P3 laptop running Linux, and an old 350MHz P2 desktop running Win 98. Hobbies? Hmm, Other than working with the 'puters, I'd say that my biggest hobby is fishin' -- there's lots of good water around here. Married, the wife has a much better job than I do, no kids, 3 cats, 4 aquariums.
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| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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| Do I think that extraterrestrial life exists? Hmm -- could be. I suppose that's why I'm running all these instances of setiathome: to help find out. Hey, it's better than doing nothing, and I'd be wasting all those idle computer cycles anyway. I'm not even going to venture a guess as to when or how or even if the discovery of any extraterrestrial life comes about. While "Sagan's principle" may sound good, there's enough rough guesses that it's no sure thing. And then there's the problem of such life actually being intelligent and broadcasting and that broadcasting is at a frequency we are listening and are in detectable range and in the correct frame of time. I mean, if they transmitted a detectable signal for 100 of our years and it reached us 500 years ago, when we weren't listening, then we still wouldn't detect them, their signal would have already past. I suspect that we would get bored sending a signal for more than 100 years at a time, and lose interest, so why wouldn't they? Oh, and don't forget to factor in the assumption we are making that they are at least somewhat similar to us. What if they aren't? What if they are so fundamentally different that they wouldn't even consider transmission or reception on the bands we would consider using? And look at what an insignificant amount of time we have been able to transmit or receive any sort of signal here -- an incredibly miniscule fraction of the age of this planet, not to mention the age of the galaxy. These signals travel as a wave front -- and you have to be looking in the right place, at the right frequency, AT THE RIGHT TIME to detect them. For all we know, the galaxy could be crisscrossed with signal wavefronts, but if they weren't passing us by right now we wouldn't be able to know about them. I still think this is a critical area of study, however. I firmly believe that our destiny is the stars, and we really do need to have some idea of what's out there before we head out that-a-way. It's better to be safe than sorry... |
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