My SETI@home profile

As creating a SETI@home profile doesn't work (brain-dead reCAPTCHA which forces you to go through rounds and rounds of tiny blurry, noisy pictures in search of some ridiculous street lights that don't look like actual street lights, buses that don't look like actual busses, fire hydrants that don't look like actual fire hydrants...), here's my replacement profile.

Personal background

I've always been attracted to the immensity of space. As a teenager, I dreamt of becoming an astronaut, though I never had the required fitness. As attached as I am to our Earth, I'd jump on the opportunity to visit a different planet without a second thought.

Besides dreaming of alien worlds and their populations, I'm a computer programmer for a living, with a long forgotten background in quantum chemistry. In my free time, I enjoy writing, role-playing, gardening, and learning scientific concepts —the more unusual and thought-provoking, the better.

Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home

The discovery of another technological species would be amazing. Even if the message was only one-sided, even if we couldn't even decipher it, it would still be a major source of wonder and learning. However, the event is unlikely. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd estimate, at a given time and in our galaxy:

  1. the probability of extraterrestrial life quasi-certain, and very high even in our own solar system,
  2. the probability of multi-cellular life extremely high to near-certainty, and still very high in our "galactic neighbourhood",
  3. the probability of life capable of learning and adapting to new situations basically the same,
  4. the probability of life capable of using language and tools rather high (after all, not only primates but birds do),
  5. the probability of technological life capable of sending objects into their own planetary orbit moderate to low,
  6. the probability of technological life capable of sending signals we could detect very low, as it requires emissions of huge power to counterbalance the distance, and the higher the power the less likely the emitting civilisation will be sustainable long enough to coincide with our own brief ability to detect them,
  7. the probability of ever physically meeting technological aliens so low as to be basically nonexistent.

(Please prove me wrong about the last two points!)

Nonetheless, even if I'm not holding my breath, spotting artificial signals would be so satisfying it makes the search worthwhile despite the low probability. With more hope than belief, I've participated to the SETI@home project from its beginning in May 1999. Then I stopped when they switched to BOINC, and have just started again in June 2019. I also used to have a separate account at work.

My stats for all projects on BOINCstats

My BOINC projects:

My stats for all projects on BOINC Combined Statistics
Laura+web@Espezon.org

My home page (in French).
Last update: 9th May 2020.