Background
            I am a 79-year-old retired professor of information science.  I 
have long been interested in radio waves ever since my days in WWII as a 
navy radio operator.


SETI thoughts


I am increasingly skeptical of ever making meaningful contact with 
intelligent life on other planets. The Drake Equation just doesn't enumerate 
all the requirements for intelligent life to exist:  including high 
metal-content stars, stable orbits, stable atmospheres,



  But my overriding reason is the enormous distances.  Take a nearby system: 
100 light years.  That means it takes 100 years from the time a message is 
sent from another planet for us to receive it, and then another 100 years 
for our reply to be heard by the alien planet. That's 200 years round trip. 
A relatively nearby system of a thousand light years takes two thousand 
years round trip. And most star systems are well beyond  a thousand light 
years.



            Compared to other species on earth, mankind is extraordinarily 
intelligent and has achieved mind-boggling things, all within the last 7,000 
years, but it has taken 5 million years for intelligent man to develop.  If 
it takes that long for intelligent life to develop on another planet.  That 
life could have come and gone and we would never detect it.  Or, consider 
that intelligent life has not yet taken place on another planet.  By the 
time it does, we will probably be long gone.  Its a matter of timing.



            Millions of species have developed on earth.  One million minus 
one, Technological Homo sapiens has evolved to a highly advanced state over 
a very long time. Ability to send/receive radio waves containing information

has only developed in the last 100 years.  Millions of species probably have 
developed on other planets.  It would be a happy coincidence if earth man 
would ever coincide or codevelop with one alien planet intelligent species.



            I think it far more likely that we will detect biology of sorts, 
rather than intelligent life on an extrasolar planets.   I think it's 
hopeless.

 The Active Mind website,

 http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/SETI/drake_equation.html,

 estimates that   the number of planets per star that are capable of 
sustaining life (ne in the Drake equation) is 1 to 5.  I think, from what we 
now know of extrasolar planetary systems, this figure is far too high.



 But I hope I'm wrong.  That's why I'm participating in SETI@HOME. Current 
work units:  4703.   S@H participant since June 1999.