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| Personal background |
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I am a UN*X internals guru who until recently was working for Lucent Technologies R&D in the Messaging Solutions Group in Columbus, Ohio. No, I don't officially work for Bell Labs, but with my group, the distinction was pretty difficult. In the past, I worked for Ohio State, CompuServe (where I was in charge of UN*X and USENET when I left), OCLC plus a number of other places with little recognition value.
I went to Ohio State in the early 80's, where I studied
Astrophysics for a few years until OSU started goofing up my
records (i.e. lost grades/schedules). During this time, I
was fortunate to volunteer on the Big Ear project for a few
quarters, and knew Dr. Robert Dixon, Dr. Jerry (Wow!) Ehman
and Dr. John Kraus. Since then, I finished up with a BSEE
from Ohio University, specializing in Computer Engineering.
It has been probably 15 years since I last spoke with Dr.
Kraus, but I have been talking regularly with Drs. Dixon and
Ehman since rejoining the team in the fall of 2001. Since the demolition of Big Ear, the team is now working on a next
generation radio telescope called Argus. See our web site at http://www.naapo.org for details.
What do I do for fun? One may think that living in
Columbus with the Memorial Tournament and all, I would love to golf. Actually, I don't care for golf...if you think for a moment you may realize part of the reason why. Instead, I love to mess with UN*X systems, do some photography, and read up on astronomy. I have fairly nice telescope, but Columbus has a very bad case of light pollution, and many nights I find 3rd magnitude is about all that is visible. I am also a amateur radio operator and SkyWarn spotter. Finally, my wife, 9-yr old daughter and I
belong to a living history group which covers the time
period of 600AD through 1600AD. Besides having fun
practicing medieval armoured combat in this group, I love to
study the history of astronomy and math. I also attend chess tournaments in which my daughter plays. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I don't think the question is whether or not extraterrestrial life exists,
but whether or not there is "advanced" extraterrestrial life which somewhat
approximates our level of knowledge and technology. This distinction is
especially true given the evidence which has built up for microbial ET life
and the possibility that Hoyle/Wickramasinghe (sp?) may have a semi-valid theory.
over the past few years. However, for advanced life, I think that the odds
are in favor of at least one such ET lifeform given the number of stars which
are out there which may have planets. We still do not the
slightest clues to most of the coefficients in Drake's famous equation, and
the density of such lifeforms may be extremely low. For this reason, I cannot
say if/when such a discovery will occur. However, if/when it happens, the
benifit will be that we are not alone and we will have some hope for
a future. Unfortunately, this knowledge is a two-edged sword, and the other
edge may cut open such a philosophical/religious debate that some hostillity
could occur.
Should we transmit a beacon (more than we are already doing with radio and TV
broadcasts)? I don't think so, unless we can answer the question of where.
At our level of technology, we really cannot afford the amount of energy
required to broadcast a meaningful beacon of any duration. However, when we
either know of a potential location or we get to the point where we have
a much more significant amount of ships in non-terrestial orbits, then I think
we can start asking this question again. And at that time, what we should
broadcast is a bit more complex form of the Arecibo message, then proceed from
there.
Why am I running SETI@Home? Well, unless we look, there is little chance of
answering the question of whether or not we are alone, is there? |
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