|
| Personal background |
|---|
| Having a firm background in archaeology, it was inevitable that I would end up doing something totally unrelated and now own a small computer network integration company in SE Massachusetts. When not playing with my own or other people's computers, I can often be found reading, vintning, weaving beads, writing science fiction and fantasy, or hanging out with the Society for Creative Anachronism. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
|---|
I first became aware of SETI@home when a friend sent me an email about the program. I joined up almost immediately and started running the screen saver on all the machines in my office. Not only is this a great, and relatively effortless, way to make a valuable contribution toward our exploration of the universe (or at least our immediate neighborhood), but the screen saver is one of the least intrusive I've ever run (and I have tested a lot of screen savers!).
Are they out there? Of course! Given the size of the universe the odds are against our being completely alone. Will we discover them? Who knows? To date we only have guesses as to the possible population density of this section of our galaxy, so there's no way to know where our nearest neighboring intelligence may be... yet! That's the whole point of exploration! Benfits, dangers? Lots of them. SF literature has covered the possibilities beter than any small paragraph like this ever could. The greatest benfit, I would think would be in meeting another sort of people who have thought of things we haven't, of course that's also the danger. Should we transmit our own signal? In a way we already have in the form of radio and television signals, admittedly they are probably quite weak at interstellar distances, but they're out there, so are most of the more intentional and focused signals we have sent to our interplanetary probes. So we've already sent out signals (and even a few calling cards) will another few make that much of a difference? |
| 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 |
|
|
