On Sun, 2004-01-25 at 01:31, Daniel Crookston wrote:
> Chance of finding aliens: 1 in a really huge number.  Chance of finding a
> cure for cancer: 1 in a much smaller number.
> 
You may be right, but the chance of life outside our own solar system is
100% (by theories of evolution or creation, either one), and the chance
of intelligent life out there (again, by either theory) is about 100%. 
Whether or not SETI would ever find it, that is the 1 in a really huge
number.  For me knowing that there are other mortals out there is
enough.

Helping to sequence DNA, model protein folding, etc, is more worthwhile
to me personally.  Of course that may be to having friends in the BYU
Chemistry Department that are doing computational chemistry (as in
actually looking for cures for cancer).

In case people don't know, that little byu logo that bounces around the
screens of inactive access point workstations on campus is actually a
distributed computational program written in java that processes data
for biologists and biochemists on campus.

Michael


> Dan
> 
> > On Wed 21 Jan 2004 at 11:57:38, Jacob Albretsen said:
> > > This is true, from what I read the project was so successful that there
> were
> > > more contributors than data to give out.  But they are still giving me
> data,
> > > so I still chunk it in my spare time.
> >
> > I'l pick back up on this: [EMAIL PROTECTED] is still sending data, but it's
> > repeat data.  Basically, you're checking for alien signals in a region
> > of space where someone's already looked and hasn't found any.  What's
> > more, in some cases you're going over exactly the same data set someone
> > else has already processed.
> >
> > Proteins, on the other hand, a still abundant.  Only about
> > 10,000,000 more that we haven't determined the structure of yet.
> >
> > -- 
> > Soren Harward
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> 
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-- 
Michael Torrie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

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