Slashdot Mirror
SETI Pioneer Jill Tarter Retires
ananyo writes "After 35 years, astronomer Jill Tarter is retiring from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) — a field she helped pioneer and popularize, most recently at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. Tarter, who inspired the late Carl Sagan to create the fictional character Ellie Arroway, heroine of the book and movie Contact, says she will instead focus her efforts on what she calls 'the search for intelligent funding.'"
I did SETI since it started in 1999 up to 2005 for "Team Microsoft" - & I don't consider it a "waste"!
I state that since 1 "good thing" MIGHT be a 'future good thing', in that between spectography, & finding a planet that's in the "life belt" (distance from a sun like our own that bears water & other conditions needed to create life like our own on THIS planet is)!
AND
As to the signals detected?
Hey, it MAY function as a form of "stellar 'pre-cartography'", in that it may lend clues on what worlds to attempt to journey to or contact, first...
* One things folks have to also consider is, is that it's really costly effort, even for end-users of the BOINC system, in that folks DO spend monies on their electric bills... & the program does use that, no "getting around that".
See - I'm personally of the belief that NO HARD WORK is EVER WASTED, & one day?
Yes - The data from Project SETI will help advance the human race (hopefully for the better) OR rather, lead to something that will & SETI's data will have contributed to that!
(Call it a "prediction"/hunch...)
APK
P.S.=> So, the efforts in contributing to that, like myself, that spent years on it (1999-2005 here http://stats.kwsn.net/team.php?proj=sah&teamid=26482&sort_order=expavg_time&sort_direction=ASC personally, iirc) weren't a waste of time, or energy, & yes/again - that 1 day, that data will help guide starships into the systems that are MOST LIKELY to bear life such as our own... apk