I'm an ecology lecturer at Lincoln University, New Zealand. I'm having fun exploring planet Earth, some of which is more alien than I could imagine. Bacteria with strange metabolisms living a kilometer underground! Lichens (tri-kingdom symbionts!) that can survive being frozen at near absolute zero and live for over 4,000 years! Cuttlefish that communicate with colour patterns on their skin! It's a wild planet we're born on. I bet extraterrestrial life is even crazier.
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
Perhaps knowing others are out there will make us wake up and care more for our own precious little planet. I doubt it. At least it would be fun to tune in to their nature documentaries (The natural history of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.)
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.