|
| Personal background |
|---|
Hi, my name is Erwin Janzing. I live in The Netherlands, in a city called Groningen, which ofcourse is famous for it's liquor company Hooghoudt. I'm aged 31 and I work as a sales consultant within an IT company called VCD Automatisering.
I run SETI on my desktop at home and on my laptop at work. I am still waiting for a client for use on an iPAQ.
|
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
|---|
Extraterrestrial life exists, I suppose statistics point clearly in that direction. Although, didn't my statistics professors teach me to beware of statistics, because they can be used to prove anything, given some manipulation... Anyway, there's even talk that life on earth itself was injected by a meteorite containing the required material to start things off... Enough to justify the research.
The question remains whether there's life out there that would see us as life, and whether we would recognise it as life.
If it's the basic stuff, i.e. life's building blocks (life as we know it), the benefit is our further understanding of our own lives, which may trigger advances in medecine, so that's certainly worthwhile.
As to other life forms, if we recognise them as such, finding them could help us envision alternatives to our way of life. This would not advance the sciences, but that may influence our views on politics, economics, environmental issues... Of course there would be some substantial culture shocking, with the dangers we all know since it happened on earth as well each time a new 'isolated' culture was discovered. But that's just the way evolution works... Well, that's enough speculation. Whatever the odds, it's worth trying...
PS: Of course there's enough life on our own planet (eg. in earth's oceans or in the upper layers of the atmosphere) that remains badly understood... But there my PC cannot help for now...
|
| Your feedback on this profile |
|---|
| Recommend this profile for User of the Day: |
I like this profile |
| Alert administrators to an offensive profile: |
I do not like this profile |
|
|
