Profile: tekniko

Personal background
My background is in science and IT. Long ago (> 12 years) and far away (on the other side of the state) I was a geology student and budding FORTRAN programmer working on satellite imaging and remote sensing projects.

It turned out that I was not as interested in geology as I had thought; I never used the education after college. Now the school has an astronomy program...

I have always been interested in space science, astronomy, and engineering. My parents still have the pictures of the solar system that I drew when I was 5 or 6 years old.
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
1. Yes, I think extraterrestrial life exists. If not, then it's an awful waste of space.

I don't know when, if ever, we will discover it and I don't know how, but I think we are on the right track. Since we (as a species) continue to find excuses not to leave the cradle of Earth, passive searching is about the best we can do right now.

Discovery of an intelligent, non-terrestrial species will really upset the way we think of ourselves. With any luck, it will humble and enlighten us as a whole. It would answer the question "are we alone?", but would probably create more questions than it answers. That's alright, because questions are good.

2. We should transmit a beacon for others to find. We should send something similar to that which is carried aboard the Voyager probes, if perhaps more up-to-date. On the other hand, we've been transmittung television signals for decades.

3. I run SETI@home because I am interested in distributed computing and problem solving, because I think there is more to the Universe than just us, and because I am a member of the Planetary Society.

I think the SETI@home project is interesting and a brilliant application of distributed systems modeling techniques.

My only suggestion might be to upgrade the computing infrastructure, especially bandwidth, as best as possible. There are lots of people trying to help out.

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