suppose will sound more appealing to the average person--"the search for
enormous prime numbers" or "the search for alien life forms"--especially now
that SETI has such high-profile exposure? GIMPS has a big disadvantage in
This might be true for a few months but I susupect that many will lose
interest as (at last report) the SETI software will not alert you if it
finds a "match." They won't tell you if your dataset has an interesting
target because they don't want to cause a possible panic due to a false
alarm.
Would anyone care to comment on the appeal of SETI? Personally speaking, it
doesn't interest me at all. I don't consider its goals to be terribly useful
or important, and I don't think that it has a reasonable chance of
accomplishing anything. But as number theory enthusiast I find something
intrinsically interesting and worthwhile about finding factors and searching
for Mersenne primes. I am probably in a minority of the general population
in this regard.
What's the appeal of SETI? Many people (at least in the US) seem to
believe in ETs (just look at the popularity of the X-files, MIB,
Independense Day, Star Trek, etc.) As for useful goals that seems to be a
matter of opinion no matter what you decide to study. As a number theory
enthusiast I would think that you would find it unusual if they didn't
find something. Not to say that there are ETs but if you consider the
number of stars we know about (and say similar to our sun) then I would
expect at some point for life to form on that planet and
accidently/intentionally broadcast radio signals. Yes I'm playing fast
and loose here with a few things but this are just the results from a
quick poll of co-workers.
-Ray
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