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| Personal background |
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I am a 42 year old computer professional, and have had a life long interest in all sorts of matters relating to computers, science, space, and technology.
My new computer is an AMD Turion X2 Laptop.
My interests are reading (almost anything I can get my hands on, but prefer fantasy and sci-fi), movies, music, science, computers, and life in general.
As a teenager, I read OMNI magazine every month. And because my mother was a programmer from the 1960's until the 1990's, I also was very interested in the evolution and power of computers. When I heard about the SETI@Home project, I was immediately interested. The concept of millions of computers working together to decode the backlog of signals was something I was very interested in, and I signed up to help out in this effort.
I was a US Marine Infantryman for 10 years, 1983-1993. This explains my obvious choice of teams. However, I am now serving in the US Army.
In fact, "Mushroom" was a nickname I picked up when I was in Panama with 2/2 doing jungle training. As everybody knows, Infantry Corporals are like Mushrooms, they are kept in the dark and fed BS. :) |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I do believe that extraterrestrial life does exist. To me, the universe is far to large for us to be the only form of life to ever evolve.
However, I do not believe in UFO\\\\\\'s. I do believe in the limits of faster-then-light travel. This means that more then likely, any contact we will ever achieve will be of a one-directional sort. Even if we someday receive a signal, it will most likely have originated hundreds of light years or more distant from us.
I believe that more then likely, most life on distant stars will not have the technology abilities that we currently possess. If you consider the belief that life originated on Earth 3.8 billion years ago, yet we have only had the ability to decode information such as this for the last 30 years. More then likely, most cases of \\\\\\"life\\\\\\" on other planets is in such a state. Either non or semi-intelligent life, or in some other way not to our level of technological sophistication.
Therefore, I think this is simply be for the knowedge that we were not alone in the universe. That some other form of life in the past had reached the degree of technology to be able to send signals outside of it\\\\\\'s solar system.
I do not believe that there could be any dangers. Because of the vast distances involved, I do not believe that somebody would use SETI as a \\\\\\"homing signal\\\\\\" to search us out.
I do think a \\\\\\"beacon\\\\\\" is an interesting concept. But I do not look at it as a way to contact others or let them find us, as much as a way to say to the universe \\\\\\"Hey, we are here!\\\\\\".
In thousands or millions of years, our signal might reach somebody that will be able to intercept it, and trace it back to what may be have been our original star.
As far as information to send, the packet that Carl Sagan designed to go along with Pioneer 10 is a good place to start.
I run SETI at home in the belief that there are such signals out there. Either sent out intentionally (as in SETI) for others to see, or accidentally sent out purely for their own use (TV and radio). |
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