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| Personal background |
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| I live in the beautiful harbour city of Wellington, New Zealand. My wife and I reside in a three-storey house set in a bushy suburb where we are regularly invaded by all manner of New Zealand flora and fauna. I have a strong interest in Science, Mathematics, and Computing. Indeed, somewhere in my life history I managed to write a doctoral dissertation on the theory of signal detectability! I am sad to report, however, that I did not detect any aliens in the course of my research! Currently, I make my living as a computer programmer for an asset management company. I enjoy travelling (as do many NZer's!) and have visited nearly 30 countries. Before I die, I would like to visit them all! |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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Imagine a civilization that is billions of years old that has taken technology almost to the limits of what is physically possible. It is embodied in enourmously powerful planetary-scale computers that process information using the fabric of space-time and can create baby universes from black holes. Science fiction? Maybe, but I think that in our search for ETI we are likely to encounter extremely advanced civilizations that are millions, if not billions, of years ahead of us. These civilizations are what we should expect in a 12 billion year old universe that consists of 100 billion billion stars. They would be the dominant populations in our galaxy and others.
If there are such civilizations in our galaxy, they will probably be well aware that life exists on Earth and would have been for quite some time. For one thing, the atmospheric signature of our planet would give us away to any civilizations that have conducted a comprehensive sky survey with powerful enough telescopes (and they would have telescopes way beyond anything we now have!). For this reason, I don't believe a beacon is necessary. Perhaps they may have even sent probes here (I do not, I hasten to add, believe in UFOs!). So why haven't we heard from them? Well, think of the impact on our cultures and societies that their knowledge and technologies would have. Unless the contact is extremely carefully managed, it could be devastating for us. Are we ready to re-evaluate everything we think to be true? How would the religions of the world react? And what could we say to such intelligences? So perhaps they avoid contact for now. Indeed, maybe we have to find them. If very advanced intelligences exist, we may see signs of their activities as our telescopes improve. Perhaps we already are but astronomers are not used to the idea that data may not have a natural origin.
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