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| Personal background |
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My name is Chet and I enjoy working with computers. Most employers call me a Lead SDE, but my wife calls me "crazy coder" on good days and "lazy coder" on bad ones. I've worked in the software industry for over 15 years for a few smaller companies like IBM, Compaq, and Microsoft. I enjoy math, I use to teach Calc and Algebra as an associate professor, and Seti is lots of math. The idea that there is someone out there is pretty hazy math, and that's very interesting. Exactly how much room is there in the universe and then how many galaxies, planets etc fit in there? Here is a good math question that illustrates the idea - if you put the Milky Way in your coffee cup how far would you have to walk to get to the next Galaxy? Did I mention I like blue?
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| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I'm pretty pessimistic that there is life out there, but I like to hope there is. It takes more than numbers in your favor to have life, just like owning a ticket to the lottery doesn't guarantee you will be a millionaire. And then we want to find intelligent life beyond that. I do enjoy being hopeful and watching my computer scan the data, but Seti may in the end just be a nice screen saver for thousands of lonely computers. If we broadcast anything it should be some galactic "speed bumps ahead" warning so others steer clear while we work out our own pubescent problems. At the moment we have a hard enough time remembering to love ourselves, much less be kind to something we don't share our planet with. Just for proof of concept and round trip concept testing, some 3rd party should put a device on Mars or further out and then beam back an Alien signal to Seti. Some bright minds would have to figure out how to double blind the test, and use multiple devices. Then it would be very interesting to see how well Seti and our scientists perform at locating and decoding the signal.
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