AM:  Mr. Dodinot, why did you decide to found the European SETI group?

Seti users can unit into group. Their is incredible group of musicians fans, beer lovers and so on. But there was not any serious and active group uniting Europeans. Statistics about European are under evaluated because Seti programme propose systematicly USA has a first choice for nationality when you register and because it is split between more than 25 countries.

There is also no reference inside Seti about the European participation in collecting data by the radio telescope of Nançay in France and probably some others in Europe.

So by participating to our group, members both support the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the idea of European integration.

AM:  Could you tell us something about EUT new plans?

OD:  First step will be to get more visibility by growing. We are now a middle size group with 19 participants and 1300 work units. We would like to join the top first 200 club classification which presently request 32000 units. It is still far but feasible as we have a very fast progression (see our statistics in the attached document). As we are becoming more credible, we are join by bigger and bigger players.

The last and more difficult step would be to organise an autonomous European Seti programme open to all European and Europe lovers using the data collected by European radio telescope.

This programme would of course be part of the general Seti search but would strongly demonstrate the importance of the European participation.

AM:  What do you think - how big is our chance to find an E.T?

OD:  For the time being they are quite small but improving fast. Radio telescopes are becoming more sensitive and computers allow to scan more and more frequencies. We already can detect planets big like Saturn on the nearest stars. Soon we will be able to find small and live friendly planets like ours. We will concentrate the radio search on it and one day will come THE signal.

When? I am forty years old and I am reasonably confident that it will be during my life time. I am nearly sure that it will be during the life time of my 20 month old child. 

AM:  Do you have anything to say to our readers?

AM:  Do you like Star Trek?

OD:  I am not so found of Science fiction. I think that the reality of space research: the space station, the Ariane programme, the Seti project are more interesting.

AM:  By the way, for future reference, our country’s name, in English, is spelled Yugoslavia, rather than Yougoslavia.

OD:  Well copied, I will never do it again. Sorry, that was my French accent.

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EUT statistics

 

 

[decembar 2000]