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SETI@Home to Crunch More Data

Posted by michael on from the little-furry-animals-with-big-sharp-teeth dept.

BigDave writes: "In this article on Wired, it describes how SETI is gradually running out of data, as the current data acquisition system cannot keep up with the rate of processing (since they now have 3 million users processing data). They have acquired a new high-speed digital data recorder which is Linux-powered, and was donated by Hewlett-Packard."

12 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Is it not a waste? by Kingpin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Imagine we did read some meaningful data. I guess we can assume that the civilization is already extinct. Ok, so we know that there's chances of life out there - what else is new?

    Why not spending that processing time on some relevant projects where you can help make a differences? Like http://foldingathome.stanford.edu/. Or similar projects for scanning for asteroids or anything else that just has a plausible purpose.

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    1. Re:Is it not a waste? by pointwood · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What if we found ET? - that would be the biggest discovery imho. Besides that, I think it's "stupid" to discuss what project is better - the result is way to often a flamefest :(

      I run Folding@Home myself for Arstechnica (the #1 Seti and Genome team!) though, but that is a matter of personal preference.

      We have a nice page with introductions to the different Distributed computing (DC) projects we are involved in right here. We "hand out" that page to new members of our "DC family". Then they can choose themselves what project they would like to support.

    2. Re:Is it not a waste? by kzanol · · Score: 2, Interesting
      until we find them, they come for a god damn visit, and they take us over.
      I would much rather waste my CPU time than max it out looking for annihilation.

      Careful there: First, seti is a PASSIVE search for ETs - we're not trying to send anything, we're just listening. Even if any anliens we happen to find should turn out to be nasty, I'd much rather have good inteligence on them than sitting on my dumb ass and get a nasty surprise one day.
      Also: "visiting to take take over" would be pretty low on my scale of possible threats: lightspeed barrier and travel time should make any personal contact pretty much improbable.

      If I'm going to worry, I'd be more along these lines:

      Alien paranoid race: they've got their own version of seti, they wait till the wavefront of electromagnetic radiation produced by an emerging civilisation (i.e by us) reaches them. Next they take steps to prevent us ever becoming a problem for them: just set some nice massiive missile in motion, accelerate to relativistic speed and have it home in on the radio signals.

      Raw materials: Once you've got an interstellar civilisation going, you might need raw materials, and lots of them. So, scan star systems for planetary systems with jupiter class planets. (they sould be able to find these easily - even we've managed to do as much). Send a bunch of unmanned probes over to replicate using resources found at the target and return processed raw materials. Takes a long time but then, you'd have to think in fairly long spans anyway as soon as you're considering more than one solar system. If one such mining/gathering probe happens on our system - tough luck; they'd probably not even notice we're here (or they just don't care).

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    3. Re:Is it not a waste? by UnifiedTechs · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Want a good distributed project that could have some near future results. United Devices ( http://members.ud.com/vypc/cancer/about.htm )has a Cancer Research project running. Here is their Description.

      "Participants in the Intel-United Devices Cancer Research Project are sent a unit of molecules over the Internet. Their PC will analyze the molecules using drug-design software called THINK. The THINK software analyzes the molecular data by creating a three-dimensional model and changing its shape (or conformation) to attempt to dock it into a protein site. When a conformation docks successfully and triggers an interaction with the protein, it registers as a "hit". These hits are what this research hinges on. Any one hit may be the one that will ultimately lead to a cure. All hits are recorded, ranked as to strength, and filed for the next stage of the project."

      Yes United Devices themselves are for profit, but at least the project could do some good. Not saying others like foldingathome can't. But Remember that cancer is the #2 killer in the US after heart disease.

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  2. Distributed Cracking by flonker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've been thinking about the whole distributed computing issue recently. SETI@Home and Distributed.net have proven how effective large scale parallel processing is. OTOH, Nimda has proven how effective a very simple worm can be.

    Joe Cracker just managed to get ahold of a password file from his favourite .mil site. But now he's stumped. He tried his regular password cracking programs, to no avail. He decides to code up a quick worm in Visual Basic, and in several hours he has thousands of computers working at his task.

  3. Why not try distributed.net, math geeks? by unitrcn · · Score: 2, Interesting
    They've cracked the DES-I, DES-III, RC5-56, and CSC encyption contests, and now they're alternating between cracking RC5-64 and finding optimal golomb rulers.

    http://www.distributed.net

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  4. Other data by Xetrov · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why not do something similar trying to find a cure for cancer, or mapping genomes, or number crunching for physics simulations or something?

    Dont get me wrong, i like SETI
    but SETI@HOME is silly i think, when there are more important things to do. How about we apply some global computing power to getting INTO space, rather than wasting it listening to millions(?) of stars?

  5. great! but what about broadcasting??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    We have made very little effort to send out signals of our own, other than disparate radio signals emitted from around the globe (local). If a civilization is to be found via SETI, shouldn't we organize a program that emits signals to targetted stars systems that have planets in a temperate climate that can harbor life?? so that in turn they can send data to us.

    Does anyone know of technology that could do this?
    I have heard of the possility of using lasers to refine the broadcast of messages to other solar systems. I would be very intrigued to see if a community of global researchers uniting to provide strong signals outbound. Seti users have already displayed the commitment to listening, i am sure i am not the only one out there who would actively participate in this endeavour.

    Next stop radio shack!

    1. Re:great! but what about broadcasting??? by YanIsa · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Here.

      "The Arecibo message, which was designed by Frank Drake (who was then Director of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, and is now Chairman of the Board of the SETI Institute) together with his Observatory staff, was a simple graphic consisting of 73 rows of 23 "bits" per row. This number of rows and columns was chosen because each is a prime number. Prime numbers could be easily guessed by any recipients, and that would help them to decode the graphic. The message was sent by simple shifting of the signal between two frequencies in the 2,380 MHz band. It took three minutes to send the message.

      The message itself gives the kind of information that any culture would want to learn about us: where we are located (at least within our solar system), what we look like (a crude stick figure), a simple drawing of the telescope used to send the message, and something about our biological construction (DNA and some of the building blocks of our biochemistry.) This message was sent as a "demonstration" to commemorate the upgrading of the 1,000 foot diameter Arecibo telescope with a new, more accurate reflector surface.      "

      (http://www.seti-inst.edu/general/ao_message_cro p. html)

      Yan

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  6. Make a difference by Throstur · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Why not use your spare processing power for something that actually *matters* like cure for cancer? IMHO that's much more important than whether we are alone in the universe or not or if we can crack some encryption codes.

    You can download the (Windows only, sigh) clients from http://members.ud.com/vypc/.

  7. Interesting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Apparently they usualy have around 15 transfers a second from the SETI dataservers - sure Slashdot ger ~25 hits a second, but 15 300K downloads a second = a hulleva lot of data.

    I'm amazed that they have even been able to do that! That's a lot of bandwidth.

    If only the southern hemisphere (say down in Australia) could be in the equation, and the SETI data team get more than 'part time' priority when it comes to collecting data from the dish.

  8. Truly a waste of time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Im all for finding ET... But SETI and such attempts are a complete waste of time. Reasons?

    1) The odds of finding something based on our current methods are dismal at best.
    2) To date there has never been a single tangible form of evidence that this is even worthwhile.
    3) There is no use to receiving an alien signal as we will not be able to respond

    Now, you may all hear they have "little" funding... well Ill garantee you they have more funding than I make in a year! To me, thats too much, for some 6th grade science experiement.

    The folks that run SETI@Home have done nothing but give their PC something to chew on while doing nothing else. So what? Thats fine - couldnt care less if it were calculating PI to the gazillion'th place. But its still as much a waste of time, money, and power.