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| Personal background |
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I'm a 58 year old married grandfather who likes being part of a science project but doesn't have the education to do it any other way. I like messing with my computers, reading, travel and motorcycle riding. I live in the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina. Rides in the mountains to observe the beauty of nature with my wife are my favorite activity. Space is a part of nature we have little opportunity to observe directly, but SETI@home gives us a little window on the universe. This project gives me a chance to do something scientific without having to acquire a degree in physics. I'll admit to being totally ignorant about math but am nevertheless totally fascinated with the universe. I've been a member of the Planetary Society since it was formed and that's where I learned about SETI@home. I dropped out of participation when the screen saver burned itself into an expensive 17" monitor. Now I've set the power settings on new system to blank the screen shortly after the screen saver activates. With my 1.5 GHz computer running 24/7 I should be able to contribute a lot more than I could with the old 400 MHz machine.
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| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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Question 1: Do you think extraterrestrial life exists? If so, when and how will humans discover it? What are the possible benefits and dangers of such a discovery?
Answer: I don't really think we'll contact ET this way, but it would be great to hear what he was saying a long time ago. The benefits and dangers are unpredictable, but that never scared us off from earlier attempts to study the unknown.
Question 2. Should humans transmit a beacon for others to find? If so, what information should we send?
Answer: I wouldn't waste time or money on a beacon. If ET is able to visit, he will. Nothing we could send now would be meaningful by the time he would come. If he is able to come now, he will find us without a beacon. I'd rather see all our efforts beyond listening, as we're doing here, devoted to a human Mars landing.
Question 3. Why do you run SETI@home? What are your views about the project? Any suggestions?
Answer: Science has a delightful habit of teaching us things we weren't even looking for and this project is quite likely to do do just that. We should get the story about what we're doing told in new venues. Thousands of computers out there might be available to us if people who have not yet heard about SETI@home were to learn that they have nothing to lose by providing this valuable and cost free service to science and humanity.
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