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| Personal background |
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Background:
I was born in Germany and have lived there and in Hungary and Denmark and now
I live in th USA. I have a MS in physics and a PhD in Astronomy and after
five years of work for NASA I am now working for the California Institute of
Technology. It wouldn't be too far-fetched to say that I am fascinated with
space and space-flight and all the weird things you can find "out there"
if you're only willing to look...
My interests can be called "widespread": there's pretty little in the
universe that I consider boring. Everything is interesting and worth
studying, there's always more complexity if one is only willing to
look for it.
All kids go through a phase where they ask "why?" a lot, and there's
just this kind of kid that never stops and in the end society decides
to put these to use as scientists and engineers...
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| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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How did you find out about SETI@home?
I'm not really sure where I saw the screensaver the first time -- but
I recall that I didn't think too much about it -- one of these
screensaver fads. That's all. Then someone mentioned the S@H project
in an online forum and I figured I'd have a look at it. Soon I had the
screensaver running on all machines that I was responsible for.
What are your views about the SETI@home project? Why do you think
it's worthwhile?
Frankly I do not think there's going to be any kind of discovery to be
made in this way - the factors are numerous and well discussed in the
pertinent online forums. However, the only way to find out is to
look. If we find out 10000 years from now that we could've saved
ourselves a lot of trouble just by checking the obvious frequencies
with a little care, people will ask "why didn't these doofuses back in
the 20th century have a look at it, it would've been so easy...". As
with all other things, the real interesting results will be in the
unexpected corners, but the only way to get to those is to examine the
expected corners first...
Why do you run SETI@home?
To be honest, I am fascinated by the distributed computing aspect of
it more than anything else: Not individual people, but humanity as a
whole (or at least a sizable fraction) are the ones looking for
non-human signals. If we're looking for "them", then it should be an
"us" that is doing the looking - a collective self-other distinction.
What are your thoughts about extraterrestrial
intelligence?
I do not think the problem is "finding" so much as "recognizing"
it. Does an ant have the capacity to recognize the intelligence of a
human being? Or would it have to be a human to do so? Look at the
problems we have defining the term "intelligence" when it comes to
dolphins or chimpanzees. Dolphins will never tame the fire, but does
that mean they're not "intelligent"? If we're having such trouble
defining what we actual |
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