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| Personal background |
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I was born in Adelaide, South Australia, well before anybody walked on the moon.
Professionally, I am a cell biologist specialising in flow cytometry, which involves lasers, high speed computing and other high tech stuff. A long time ago I was involved in making a major discovery about the interior of living cells that is summarised at: http://vector.cshl.org/dnaftb/29/concept/index.html (you need to follow through the animation option a short way to get to me). These days I mostly work on developing medical diagnostic methods. Outside work, I am fond of backpacking, sailing and natural history. In my spare time, I have written a few articles about a group of mostly tiny marine snail shells. My wife, Marilyn, edits books about birds and our daughter Catherine is studying at university.
I usually have up to three computers running SETI@home, at home and at work. Most of the people at work think that I am nuts, but tolerate my obsession. I made a couple of converts, though.
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| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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From the moment I heard about the concept of SETI (back in high school, I think) I never doubted that it was a worthwhile thing to do. I was much happier when it gained credibility at the end of the century. I had been seriously considering erecting an antenna of my own in my back yard, but time and money constraints slowed me down on that. I was really excited when SETI@home came along and welcomed the chance to contribute personally.
As a biologist, I firmly believe that the universe is teaming with life. However, 99.999999…% of the life is probably bacteria or their extraterrestrial equivalents. I have met quite a few bacteria in the course of my professional life and some of them were pretty cool guys (or girls), but they weren't great conversationalists. Intelligent life is probably extremely rare, but that is no excuse for not searching for it.
I think that a conclusive failure of SETI to find intelligent life could be a positive thing. It would mean that our existence here is an extremely precious thing. It just might make us reconsider how we are treating the planet and each other.
SETI@home has been good for the economy, my personal computers have gone through two major hardware upgrades because of it. |
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