My name is Pieter de Groot and I live in Huizen in the Netherlands. My age is 52. At this moment I am out of duty. Formerly I was joining Lucent Technologies/Bell Labs. My latest function was Thermal Engineer. My hobbies are among others astronomics and computers. I have learned SETI@home by a program at the Dutch television. With all other SETI@home users we are able to create a kind of super computer. I think that this is necessary for getting the results where we are looking for. I hope that we will find in the near future any relevant intelligent signals out of space. The discovery of oxygen in the atmosphere from exoplanets or micro-organisms on Mars of course would be a subversive discovery. But even when this confirms the question that extraterrestrial life exists, such a discovery doesn’t tell anything about the unicity of the human being.
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
In the beginning of the sixties the American astronomer Frank Drake formed a formula by which it is possible to calculate the amount of intelligent civilisation in the Milky Way. This formula runs as follows: N = R * Fp * Ne * Fl * Fi * Fc * L. In this formula R is the number of new stars that are born every year in the Milky Way. Fp is the fraction of the stars that are accompanied by planets. Ne is the number of “earth like†planets per planetary system. Fl is the fraction of the planets where life arises. Fi is the fraction of that where the evolution of that live generates intelligence. Fc is the fraction of those civilisations that use radio-communication and L is the average lifetime of such a civilisation. Even when for all fractions in this formula very pessimistic values are used, this results still in thousands of civilisations in the Milky Way. Of course most factors are not known, but the Drake-formula regards the justification to Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It will be a question of time before we will receive messages by the use of radio telescopes. A problem during the searsh will be that with the use of only one telescope not the whole universe can be reached. Also a potential signal from exoplanets will be weak unless the civilisation will transmit a focussed signal in the direction of the earth. I think that SETI will have a greater chance to succeed when a global co-operation will be established. Although SETI only is searching for extraterrestrial intelligence it would be interesting to have mutual communication. At first we have to learn their language (or they have to learn our language). Problem will be that a signal from for example a planet in the Alfa Centauri system lasts 4.3 years to reach the earth. An answer from earth to our interlocutor will last also 4.3 years. Will they wait 8.6 years before they get an answer?
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.
