SETI@Home Breaks 500,000 years

BoogieGod writes "The SETI@Home project has finally broken 500,000 years of computing time. They haven't detected any Extra Terestrials yet but there have been some interesting close calls. Now if only all 2.6 million of their users could join distributed.net."

Comments

Don't be discouraged

[Cujo]

SETI at home hasn't officially found anything yet. What they mean by that is that they haven't found something that repeatably looks like a signal.

This doesn't mean that we're alone in the universe, for four reasons:

1. They're only looking at a frequency band where we would expect to fnd a signal if someone were deliberately trying to contact us. If someone were sending out beacons in random directions, then the signal wouldn't be straightforwardly repeatable. So, they'd have to know we were here. RF signals have only been transmitted from Earth for 100 years or so, and the vast majority of the energy in the last 50 years. So, only nearby civilizations (distance <= 50 LY) could know about us and be sending these signals.
2. The Arecibo antenna is actually a volcanic caldera, and can only sees a certain band of the celestial sphere, so there could be nearby civilizations transmitting, and SETI @ Home would miss them.
3. You can make a case that any civilzation capable of contacting us would almost certainly be far more advanced than we are. Given the way communications bandwidth is gobbled up by our relatively primitive culture, they'd probably be using all sorts of sophisticated spread-spectrum technology and a wide part of the electromagnetic spectrum that would make it very tricky for us to intercept and recognize messages not intended for us, even if we were lucky with the geometry.
4. The SETI@Home people are real scientists, and they kow that they need rock-solid evidence if they're going to claim they found a signal. So, they are bending over backwards - as they should - to find alternative explanations when they do see something anomalous.

The best thing about SETI at home is that it shows that you can harness vast amounts of computing power for a good cause with modest cost. Folding @ Home will hopefully get comparable attention.

Re:Do something worthwhile, folding@home

[Mr. Mikey]

Protein folding is certainly an important problem, and worthy of CPU cycles.

That said, it doesn't give you the right to diss those who want to contribute their cycles for the sake of the search for extraterrestrial life. A confirmed reception would have profound implications, far more than figuring out how a protein folds. So far, we haven't... and that does not invalidate the search.

Arecibo (facts about)

[pq]

The Arecibo antenna is actually a volcanic caldera, and can only sees a certain band of the celestial sphere

I hate to nitpick, but Arecibo is not a volcanic caldera, in spite of what the tabloid press might report. In fact, it is a large limestone sinkhole in the karst terrain of Puerto Rico: check out this link for more info. (I promise its not a goatse.cx link.)

One of the cuter stories is that when they were searching for the perfect site on Puerto Rico, they took a dime and slid it around on a contour map of the island - and where it fit nicely inside the contours, there the dish went... Its amazing to look at, and I recommend a visit if you vacation in PR.

OTOH, your other point is completely correct - Arecibo only sees a limited range of the sky, and cannot view anything south of a certain declination (14? I forget). Not being able to see the Gal;actic center is particularly galling! That's why the new GBT (100m, unlike 305m at Arecibo, but the GBT is fully steerable) is so exciting.

How about a useful project (Climatic Modelling)?

[Malc]

I participate in Seti@Home, it seems more valuable than distributed.net's offering. However, I can see much better uses for such projects. A while ago I heard of the Casino-21 project, which is about climatic modelling. I think that this is something very useful, valuable and important to us, and I wish they would get a move on and start up. The web site of note for this project is: http://www.climate-dynamics.rl.ac.uk/. At this time you can only register your interest (I think that they're still in the planning phase.) I do recommend that people register as higher numbers might increase the chances of the project happening. Presumably registering will also sign you up for future announcements, such as when they have client software to download. Although they make comparisons to SETI@Home, I think they will operate slightly differently, with work units perhaps taking more than a year (one of the things that I think makes SETI@Home successful is that people get feedback via wu completion, and get to compete).

Extra Terrestrials?

[Black Parrot]

> They haven't detected any Extra Terrestrials yet

We've got some spares, if that's what you're looking for.

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