Profile: Larry Fuller

Personal background
After a ten year stint as a department supervisor with a commuter airline, I quit to go back to college and get a degree in psychology and a master’s degree in counseling. At the moment, I’m milking a post graduation vacation working on my house, hiking the Sandia mountains, and bicycling in New Mexico sunshine. Presently I'm gathering some equipment to try my hand at cinematography. I’ve just installed a photovoltaic power system that runs, among other things, my SETI computer. I enjoy knowing that the energy crunching the SETI work-units was bouncing around inside the sun’s photosphere only a few minutes ago. True star power!
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
Is there extraterrestrial life? Of course there is! There are just too many places in the universe that could spawn and nurture life. We’ve already proven here on Earth that life is tenacious and will survive if given a chance. The physical laws that apply here apply elsewhere as well. The Drake equation virtually guarantees myriad civilizations throughout the universe although we may not be able to detect them. One factor I see here on Earth and not included in the original Drake equation is the rapid advance in communication technologies. We no longer need to bounce a megawatt of energy off the ionosphere to communicate with the other side of the planet. Five hundred kilowatt television stations are giving way to fifty watt satellite transponders. As fiber-optics take over more data transfer and satellite receivers become more efficient, there will be less and less reason to fling large amounts of radio-frequency energy into space. This trend in technology, if universal, may limit the accidental signal but not transmissions designed for interstellar communication. Perhaps we should “choose” to send our own greeting and utilize the efficient receivers of a civilization more advanced than our own. Let's hope others have chosen to do the same.
On SETI@home: The sculptor Rodin when asked how he would go about sculpting an elephant replied, “Chip off everything that doesn’t look like an elephant.” Whether my computer is the one to find “The Signal” or not is unimportant. I’m proud to be one of the millions chipping away at this database with hopes of finding something wonderful.



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SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.