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SETI@Home Revisits Its 100 Best Signals
cmbrothe writes "The Planetary Society is running an article about SETI@Home's plan to revisit its 100 most promising signal candidates. The article also outlines the criteria for selecting the candidates."
...then what?
"Ah, a signal. Quick, beam a signal back, and...uh...wait 30,000,000 years for a reply! Cool!"
the signal must sound like a humpback whale...
Is that the REAL signals will obviously be coming from starships in nearby space which have either warp/hyperdrive and will therefore be NOWHERE near where they were when the signal was first detectred months or years ago.
lysergically yours
In the other news, the folks of SETI@space are going to visit the origins of the signals.
'First, the least reliable signals must be weeded out in a process called "data integrity check", and those that are most likely the result of detection or computer error are eliminated' So they're going to throw out all of the signals that were a result of detection. Hmmm...
SETI@home Takes Stock of Its Most Promising Signals
by Amir Alexander
I. Millions and Millions
For almost three years now SETI@home users have been processing data on their home computers. Millions of Gaussians, spikes, triplets, and pulsed signals, have been detected by SETI@home's three and a half million users, and sent back to Berkeley for further analysis. It is time, the SETI@home crew in Berkeley decided, to take stock of what has been accomplished so far. Which of this plethora of signals is the most likely to be that epoch-making transmission we have been waiting for?
A perfect gaussian as it would appear on a SETI@home screen.
Sorting through this mass of data is no easy matter: with so many candidate signals, how does one decide which is the most promising? To simplify matters a bit, the SETI@home scientists decided to start by sorting through the gaussians, and leave the other signals for later. "Gaussians", it will be recalled, are the bell-shaped power curves that are typical of continuous signals coming from space. When the Arecibo radio telescope's detection beam scans the sky, any continuous transmission from space first appears as a faint signal on the margin of the beam, then grows in strength as it approaches the beam's center, and finally fades away as the beam moves on to other regions of the sky. This pattern produces the characteristic gaussian shape. Since most SETI scientists believe that an alien transmission would indeed announce itself in the form of a gaussian, it seemed natural to start with these. Even this choice, however, left the SETI@home team with no less than 20 million candidates to choose from.
II. Why Some Gaussians are More Equal than Others
As a first step in selecting the most promising signals, each gaussian was assigned a score, defined as its peak power divided by chi square. The first element simply indicates the maximum strength of the signal. Naturally, if a signal is strong, it is a better candidate for further analysis. The second element, chi square, is a measure of how closely the detected signal resembles a perfect gaussian. The smaller chi square is, the better the fit, and consequently, the higher the gaussian score.
But while processing the signals in this manner, the SETI@home scientists detected a disturbing pattern: the number of gaussians found, it seemed, was dependent on the speed at which Arecibo's beam was traveling through the sky at the time the signal was detected. This speed, known as the telescope's "slew rate," can vary significantly, depending on what the telescope is observing at the time. For the SETI@home sky survey it would have been best if the telescope had been pointed constantly straight up, and would traverse all points at a fixed speed. But since the big dish is always being used for various scientific observations and experiments, it is a fact of life for SETI that the slew rate varies significantly over time.
An analysis of all the gaussians clearly showed that the faster the telescope's slew rate, the more gaussians it detected. The reason for this was clear to SETI scientists early on. At faster rates, it takes the beam a shorter time to scan a point in the sky than at slower rates. When a received signal is then analyzed by the SETI@home program on a user's computer, the program breaks down the continuous signal into measured "points," each lasting a fixed number of seconds. These points are represented by the blocks on your screen. A short signal (fast slew rate) would have fewer points than a long signal (slow slew rate). When the program then proceeds to search for gaussians in the data, it looks for close fits between the measured points and a perfect guassian. Naturally, it is much easier to fit a small number of points onto a gaussian curve than it is to fit a large number of points onto the same curve. As a result, the SETI@home client was much more likely to detect gaussians in short signals (fast slew rates) than in long signals (slow slew rates). These fast signals, however, were in a sense "lower quality" gaussians, because they were based on a fit of fewer points. Not all gaussians, it seems, are truly equal...
This discovery posed a significant problem: if not all gaussians are truly of the same quality, how should SETI@home go about ranking them? How do we ensure that the best candidates to be a "real" signal do indeed get the highest scores? To address this, project scientist Eric Korpela devised a mathematical function that would compensate for the "slew rate" distortion. This "normalizing" function excluded all but the best gaussians at the fast slew rates, while preserving most of the gaussians from the slow slew rates. As a result, the same number of gaussians would now be included from any slew-rate, effectively eliminating it as a selection factor.
III. Multiplets and Frequencies
The slew rate correction left SETI@home scientists with "only" 1.25 million gaussians with a score of 1.0 or higher to process and rank. These were the strongest and best fitting gaussians of the lot. But if a signal, no matter how strong and clear, is detected in the skies only once, how can we ever hope to know what it is? One need only think of the famous "Wow!" signal to appreciate the problem: the most promising signal ever detected by SETI was heard just once and never again, and as a result remains an enigma to this day. If we are to believe that a signal is coming from an alien civilization, then we must be able to detect it repeatedly.
For this reason, the SETI@home team set a final and demanding test for the remaining gaussians. A signal must be detected at least twice on two separate passes for it to be considered a likely candidate for an alien transmission.
Although this standard sounds straightforward enough, applying it is far from simple. For how does one know whether a signal detected today is the "same" one detected on a previous pass months ago? After some deliberation, the SETI@home team decided on the following criteria:
First - the two signals must come from the same direction in the sky, to within 10 arc minutes. Location, of course, is the primary indication that the two signals are one and the same.
Second - the two signals must be detected at least 900 seconds apart. This is to ensure that the two are indeed separate detections, rather than a continuous one.
Third - the "barycentric" frequency of the two signals must be the same, within 125 Hertz.
This last criterion requires some explanation. A signal coming from space will most likely not be received at a steady frequency. Because both the Earth and the presumed alien planet will be in motion around their stars, they will also be in motion in relation to each other, and their relative speed will be changing constantly. As a result, the frequency of a transmission received on Earth will drift, either increasing or decreasing, depending on the relative motions of the two planets. The SETI@home program installed on users' computers takes this effect, known as "Doppler drift," into account, and searches each data set at different drift rates. When SETI Scientists want to determine the true frequency of a transmission they must first compensate for this drift rate. This corrected frequency is known as the "detection frequency."
Even this, however, is not enough. The reception frequency is also affected by the Earth's movement within the Solar System. In other words, the same signal might be detected at different frequencies depending on the position and direction of the Earth at the time of detection. To compensate for this SETI scientists must take into account not only the Earth's exact position and movement at the time of the detection, but also the position of the Moon, the gravitational effects of the giant outer planets, and the direction the telescope is pointing. When all these are accounted for, the resulting frequency is the one that would have been received at a fixed point at the center of gravity (or "barycenter") of our Solar System. That is the barycentric frequency, used to determine whether two signals detected at different times could, in fact, be one and the same.
When the gaussians detected by SETI@home are checked against these exacting standards, the vast majority fail the test. Of the 1.25 million only 1397 qualify as being likely cases of multiple detections. They are, appropriately, labeled "multiplets."
Having a "mere" 1397 candidate signals is a vast improvement over having one and a quarter million signals, not to mention the 20 million gaussians we started out with. But even so it is too many. The SETI@home team still needs to narrow the list further, to around 25 most promising signals. This list they can then present at Arecibo, and arrange for dedicated telescope time to go back and check each of the signals separately.
Finding the few best signals out of millions of possibilities is a tough task, and there is always the danger of missing that one true signal hiding among so many false ones. The people at SETI@home are working hard to make sure this doesn't happen. And if their choices prove correct, then there is always the chance that one of these anonymous gaussians will in fact bear a message from the stars.
score= N*(bv-bv0)*exp(0.5*(bv-bv_sun)^2)/(par+0.01)^3
where
N is a normalizing factor, 1.65x10^7
bv is b-v color
bv0 is b-v color of the bluest star in the catalog (-0.41)
bv_sun is the b-v color of the sun (+0.65)
par is the parallax in milliarcseconds
How exactly do you test the validity of a formula like this?
Five billion candidates? Seems to me like they should have weeded some of those out along the way. Wasn't that the point of getting all that computational power, to come up with a manageable sample of promising possibilities?
Brevity is the soul of wit
-- Polonius
I mean, with the amount of planets out there, I'm sure there's a whole lot of life and a lot of intelligent life. It's just that we hope to find one other intelligent race and people aren't even thinking about finding more than that.
-Lucas
SETI@home Prepares to Revisit its Best Signals
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by Amir Alexander
A Special Day at Arecibo
Sometime early in 2003 the giant radio telescope at Arecibo will take a day off from its normal astronomical duties. For 24 hours it will devote all of its immense observational capacity to a single goal: searching for steady repeating signals from space, the telltale signs of intelligent transmissions.
Needless to say, SETI research at Arecibo is not limited to that one single day. The SETI@home receiver, mounted 500 feet above the enormous dish, scans the skies throughout the year in search of intelligent transmission. On most days, however, the receiver sits passively on its perch, and scans whichever part of the sky the telescope happens to point to. Over time, the receiver scans the entire celestial band visible from Arecibo. It can never, however, go back and listen attentively to a particular promising signal, to determine whether it might possible be an intelligent transmission.
This, however, is precisely what the radio telescope will do on that special day. Rather than searching the vastness of space at random, it will focus its attention on a list of 100 most promising locations, handed to the telescope operators by SETI@home scientists. All of these are locations in the sky where SETI@home had detected radio signals at least twice before.
Signal Types
Gaussians are the power curves produced when the Arecibo beam scans a steady celestial radio source. The signal is weak at first, strong when it is at the center of the beam, and then fades again. This produces a bell shaped power curve known as a gaussian.
A perfect gaussian
Spikes represent any celestial radio signal of a fixed frequency that is distinguishable above the background noise.
Triplets are a set of 3 equally spaced spikes. Whereas gaussians represent a constant signal from space, triplets may represent a series of pulses transmitted at fixed time intervals.
Scores, Stars, and Multiplets
In preparation for those very special 24 hours, SETI@home scientists have been making a concerted effort to compile the best list of signals. Since more than 5 billion(!) gaussians, spikes, and triplets have been detected so far by SETI@home users around the world, coming up with a list of the 100 most promising signals has been no easy task. First, the least reliable signals must be weeded out in a process called "data integrity check", and those that are most likely the result of detection or computer error are eliminated. Then all signals are compared to a database of known Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) sources. These are strong human-made radio transmissions generated by radars, satellites, and the like, which operate in the vicinity of Arecibo. If a SETI@home signal appears to match a known RFI source, then it too is removed from the list.
Once these obvious "false alarms" are eliminated, however, SETI@home scientists are still left with several billion signals. Each must therefore be assigned a score, representing the likelihood that it is, in fact, an alien transmission. The top 100 scorers will have their day at Arecibo, where they will earn a repeat visit to their location by the giant radio telescope.
To determine a signal's ranking in this multitude, the first step is to give it an individual or "detection" score. The factors that go into calculating this, naturally depend on the type of signal. Gaussians will be ranked according to how well their curve matches a perfect gaussian generated by the Arecibo dish, as well as by their strength. The stronger the signal, the more likely it is to be located once again. Triplets and spikes are not restricted to a particular shape, but their score also improves with their strength.
Another factor that contributes to a signal's score is its location in the sky. A signal that comes from the direction of a known star or galaxy will be given preference over one that appears to emerge from empty space. To check for this, the SETI@home crew relied on the Hipparcus catalogue - the most comprehensive list of celestial objects available. Hipparcus lists no less than 33,000 main sequence stars within Arecibo's observation band, and all of these are compared with each signal. To these are added the numerous distant galaxies that dot the skies at Arecibo's latitude, on the assumption that a signal might just possibly originate from one of them as well.
When it comes to scoring signals, however, not all stars are equal. This is because, according to SETI wisdom, some stars are more likely to host a communicating alien civilization than others. Thus, for example, only main-sequence stars are considered for signal-scoring purposes, excluding red giants and white dwarfs. Short-lived stars, whose lifespan is only a few million years, are also excluded from consideration, since complex life would not have had time to evolve in such an environment. Nearby stars, on the other hand, get "extra credit" in their scoring, since it would be comparatively easier to communicate with civilizations in our galactic neighborhood than with those in distant parts of our galaxy or beyond. Finally, the more similar a star is to our own Sun, the higher its score, since it would be more likely to host a civilization similar to ours.
The extrasolar planets discovered in recent years are also factored into the equation: a signal originating from the direction of a star with known planets will certainly receive special attention. The ideal signal, in other words, would originate from the direction of a nearby main-sequence Sun-like star with known planets.
So far we have only dealt with unique events - separate signals that have been detected by Arecibo at different times. But a signal that has been detected only once and never again is not a good candidate for an extraterrestrial communication. Consider the "Wow!" signal for example: detected in 1977, it was (and still is!) by far the strongest and clearest transmission ever detected by SETI. It was, however, never heard from again despite repeated efforts, and as a result we are still not sure what it truly was.
The Star Factor
The formula used to rank the different stars according to the likelihood that they would host a communicating civilization is:
score=
N*(bv-bv0)*exp(0.5*(bv-bv_sun)^2)/(par+
where
N is a normalizing factor, 1.65x10^7
bv is b-v color
bv0 is b-v color of the bluest star in the catalog (-0.41)
bv_sun is the b-v color of the sun (+0.65)
par is the parallax in milliarcseconds
The formula was developed by SETI@home scientist Eric Korpela.
Because of this experience, SETI@home scientists insist that signals must be persistent and reliable to be strong candidates for an extraterrestrial transmission. Only signals that have been detected more than once in the same location on separate SETI runs are to be considered. These signals, composed of two, and sometimes three separate observations, are referred to as "multiplets" by the SETI@home team.
But not only repeated signals of the same type are considered. In some cases a particular kind of signal, say a gaussian, was detected at a given location during one pass of the Arecibo dish, while a different kind of signal, say a triplet, was detected coming from the same direction during a later pass. SETI@home scientists combine the two (or more) signals into a single candidate, and refer to it as a "metacandidate."
Now that we have ranked all the different gaussians, spikes, triplet, multiplets, and metacandidates, each according to its own set of criteria, we are well on our way to selecting the "winning" signals that will be tested at Arecibo. A major problem nonetheless remains. A signal's "detection score" effectively compare gaussians to other gaussians and triplets to other triplets, and determines which ones are most likely to represent intelligent transmissions. But in order to come up with a list of the 100 best signals overall, it is also necessary to compare gaussians to triplets, and spikes to metacandidates, and decide which are the most promising. To resolve this, each signal is assigned not only a "detection score," which is specific to each type of signal, but also a "metascore," which can be compared with all the different types of signals. The 100 signals with the best metascores are the ones that Arecibo will aim for.
That Magical Frame of Reference
One characteristic of a radio signal will immediately make it stand out in the crowd, and send it to the top of the list of candidates for re-observation: if it remains at a fixed and steady frequency. Almost all celestial signals vary in frequency over time. That is because they originate on moving celestial bodies, whose velocity relative to the Earth changes constantly. This causes the signal's detection frequency on Earth to vary as well, in a phenomenon known as "Doppler drift."
In their analysis, SETI@home scientists compensate for the Doppler drift: they take into account the motions of the Earth around the Sun, including the effects of the Moon and the giant planets, arriving at a figure known as the "barycentric" frequency. That is the frequency at which the signal would be detected if the receiver was placed not on Earth, but at the center of gravity ("barycenter") of the Solar System.
Even so, because of the motion of the transmitting body, the barycentric frequency does drift and scientists cannot compensate for the motions of this unknown body. If, however, the barycentric frequency of a signal remains steady, this almost certainly means that it is designed to compensate for the movements of its own host planet. In other words, it would point to a deliberate intelligent design. This is a unique, and indeed "magical" state of affairs. SETI@home scientists like to refer to the frame of reference in which celestial signals are sent and received at a steady frequency as a "Magical Frame of Reference."
And so, the SETI@home crew, along with millions of users around the world, awaits the day at Arecibo when it will put its most promising results to the test. As is usual with SETI, the odds of finally detecting an alien transmission are long. Nevertheless, those 24 hours at Arecibo may represent one of the best opportunities yet to find that elusive signal.
/me crosses fingers that my packet detected ET
would i get modded up for that?
Wasn't that telescope destroyed in Goldeneye? How are they still using it?
Lasers Controlled Games!
If they've done any research to correlate the number of possible signals to the frequency of radio broadcasts featuring Michael Jackson...just a thought, I mean, they are looking for aliens...
... seems it's coming from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C.
Oh wait..
Well, still other 99 signals to try.
I measured the number of watts my computer is using. I found that when the processor is at maximum it consumes 20 watts of energy more than when it is idle. This was without any power management. So in my case, and I suspect many other cases running seti@home causes global warming.
Just for fun, I googled the 1977 "Wow" signal mentioned in the article and every so often in SETI news. Found this good BBC article on the subject.
This blatant karma whoring is brought to you by the letters "ET".
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
The day that SETI searches for signals might be one of the most important dates in mans history J
This is because we might actually find a CONFIRMED signal of intelligent life!
But it most probably will be nothing (the chances of us getting a hit see slim to none based on the probability )
Only if the govt had a copyright/IP treaty/agreement with the alien civilization.
Oh, and btw, quit turning every goddamn post into a lame ass rant or joke about the RIAA or DMCA. Thank you.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Obligatory comments here...
Did I miss any?
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
I don't know, and I wonder if anybody does.
Consider the past efforts at Arecibo to send a message to other stars. We focused on one star for a couple of hours, and sent a message. Perhaps we repeated it over the course of a few days.
Now, let us suppose that a civilization with a similar technology to ours was located on a planet around Proxima Centauri, and let us suppose they did exactly as we did in our transmissions at Arecibo. Would that signal have been found by SETI@Home?
Given how the SETI receivers might not have been looking in the right places at the right times to see more than one transmission, might that signal have been discarded because we did not see more than one instance of it?
www.eFax.com are spammers
found any aliens yet?
Me? I'll spend my spare CPU cycles trying to find a drug combination to cure cancer.
Sorry if this comes across as flamebait or redundant, but I just think that there's more relevant problems here on Earth that we could fix.
And sue those aliens later!
After many years of work, it's great to see good results. This is only ascii, but this graph represents the best signal so far:
SETI: Wasting your tax dollars for more than 30 years.
I can't believe that people are still looking for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, hooing to make contact one day.
Stanislaw Lem once described the window of contact as the tiny amount of time in a planet's life that an intelligent life form has to evolve far enough to create enough noise around their planet that will be picked up as non-static background noise, until its civilisation dies the entroy death.
Even if we picked up something now, it would only be a tiny flicker of something that existed millions of years ago, with no hope of us ever meeting whoever created this glimpse of order in the chaos of the universe.
We are alone out there. Confined by the same rules that hold our universe together into a tiny section of space and time. The best we can hope for is to become nomads, travelling to near systems in the hope of making them inhabitable when this sun gives out. If we haven't fallen into the ashes until then.
But what about the Genesis Project? That planet came to life in just a few short years. Oh what horror to think that the reborn Spock might be left behind!
Almost all celestial signals vary in frequency over time. That is because they originate on moving celestial bodies, whose velocity relative to the Earth changes constantly. This causes the signal's detection frequency on Earth to vary as well, in a phenomenon known as "Doppler drift." ... If, however, the barycentric frequency of a signal remains steady, this almost certainly means that it is designed to compensate for the movements of its own host planet. In other words, it would point to a deliberate intelligent design.
a rk goals of the SETI project, would this really have any chance of hitting anything?
While this is as good a plan as any, i suppose, given the find-a-possibly-nonexistent-light-switch-in-the-d
I mean.. why would an intelligence compensate for doppler shift? The only reason i can think of that they would is if they were trying to beam "hello out there" signals into outer space. Do *we* (i.e. humans) compensate for doppler shift when we broadcast those random signals into space trying to find aliens? Or are they hoping to find interstellar communications between an alien race and its own starships?
And anyway, would this really work? I mean, everything in the universe is moving away from each other, but they're all doing it at different speeds. One would think that the signal the aliens put out would have to be specifically targeted at earth itself in order for its frequency to stay constant, if the signal was targeted at something else the frequency wouldn't drift at quite the right rate (assuming the way you compensate for doppler shift is, in fact, to vary your frequency) to be constant from earth.
Is any of this right?
Signals so promising, that no alarms went off the first time they were recorded? Well I guess if it was easy as the movie Contact, we wouldn't have needed the SETI@Home Project.
--"It's Bradford Company, slash your last name, dot your first name"
A cover of "Peppermint Twist" recieved from a point near Epsilon Eridani, played on what sounds like oil drums and unlubricated condoms using a 68-tone scale. Great beat and you can dance to it if you have five legs.
Life is like surrealism: if you have to have it explained to you, you can't afford it.
I have just about every machine at work running seti. Does this mean if I have a strong signal my Ranking will improve :)
I'm not talking about all the regular satellite communications. Are we intentionally broadcasting any messages for the universe at large?
And would regular satellite communications appear barycentric? It doesn't sound like it. So, if we're not broadcasting barycentric signals, why would we expect other lifeforms to broadcast them? Or are we braodcasting something barycentric? Can I tune in?
This just proves the conspiracy to hide alien life from us!
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
And we'll have to find the nuclear wessels.
And we'll screw up the time line by creating transparent aluminum.
i understand the 100% scientific approach to weeding out certain stars that have not been around that long:
When it comes to scoring signals, however, not all stars are equal. This is because, according to SETI wisdom, some stars are more likely to host a communicating alien civilization than others. Thus, for example, only main-sequence stars are considered for signal-scoring purposes, excluding red giants and white dwarfs. Short-lived stars, whose lifespan is only a few million years, are also excluded from consideration, since complex life would not have had time to evolve in such an environment. Nearby stars, on the other hand, get "extra credit" in their scoring, since it would be comparatively easier to communicate with civilizations in our galactic neighborhood than with those in distant parts of our galaxy or beyond. Finally, the more similar a star is to our own Sun, the higher its score, since it would be more likely to host a civilization similar to ours.
and maybe this sounds really really stupid and like i should stop watching star trek - but i don't actually watch it! but surely a far advanced alien race could be migratory and move to one of these less advanced planets. like maybe for the sunshine?
While SETI@home will be using the Arecibo dish to observe the most significant 100 signals, wouldn't it suck for the intelligent signal was the 101st? If there are billions of signal candidates, I imagine the 101st signal is still interesting.
I also wonder if they are going to put the most interesting signals in the middle of their dish time, so that the operators have some warm up time... Putting the most interesting ones first might not be such a good idea if the engineers haven't had a chance to have their coffee/tea/etc. kick in.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Sure, the astrometry (positions) in Hipparcos are better than in Tycho 2, and Hipparcos contains more information about the stars than Tycho 2 (e.g. variability), but still. I would in fact think that Tycho 2 would be better for SETI than Hipparcos, but they may have their reasons.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Mr. Garrison: (vomits) "Waited through the entire movie to see the alien and it was her god-damned father!"
-FF
SQUEAK, the Death of Rats explained.
What is the probability of detecting a signal which was not directly sent towards Earth? Do we have the technology to dectect a signal which power was a few kW when emitted from 1000 light years? And what about background radiation? AFAIK, SETI listens at the frequency of hydrogen, because the backround radiation is the lowest at that frequency. However, I doubt that aliens use this frequency for sort distance communication. They may use it for long distance, but in that case, they send it directly to the receiver. If we are not in the path of such a signal we won't detect it.
Some say our presence can be detected from 100 light years. Is this really the case? Note that 99.99999% of the radio waves we emit are very weak compared to what neccessary for long distance communication and not emmited at the frequency of hydrogen.
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
with its golden record....
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
Funniest...post...ever...
You should have linked the actual AYB flash though for the slower out there. Nice use of a pop reference.
Isn't it obvious?
"And like that
5. The "It's a trap!" signal
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
and i might run it.
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
I run SETI@home because I really want to meet Jodi Foster!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I get the feeling that we, metaphorically speaking, wall flowers. Leaning agains the wall at the side of the dance waiting for _someone_else_ to some invite us out to play.
Other than the accidental leakage, are we beaming out anything intentional for SETI@marklar?
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
In Contact (the book) by Carl Sagan, the aliens had a radio listening post which just sat there waiting to detect signals from wherever. It was floating about in space which is probably a good place for it really. Then once a signal was detected, it sent a massively powerful signal back in the direction of the newly detected incoming signal.
What we need is some kind of radio telescope that can listen from all directions at once. That'd produce a lot of data, but it would make finding signals a lot faster.
I was hoping people would like to join my project of SBI@home (Search for Buluga Intelligence). I will be puttting a microphone in the middle of the Red River (stationed in Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada), in hopes to pick up signals sent directly to us, with intent, from buluga whales. Once we have communication with them, we will attempt to pin point exactly where the buluga whale was when he/she sent this message to us. Even tho the signal may have taken 1000 days to reach us, and even tho we would be analyzing signals sent from the buluga whale sometime in september of 1998. THEN - We will attempt to decipher the message and send back the signal with a witty 'first reply' joke ... Which will be the first intergalactic joke. (next to seti@home that is) ...
THEN - me and the buluga will chill and have beers
In Soviet Russia CANCER cures YOU
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
Does this mean they've already been there without telling us? :-)
would be that life isn't rare. Therefore, we don't have to treat the Earth carefully, because our situation isn't unique. Clear-cut those rainforests, slash-and-burn agriculture is best; pollution controls - we don't need no steenking pollution controls; biodiversity is for weenies.
:-) :-) :-) (because sometimes sarcasm/humor goes unrecognized)
Oops, *how* far away did you say these other planets are?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
when will they find alf?
Isn't that the antenna off of the james bond movie goldeneye? That is the first thing I thought when I saw the picture.
Do you remember what happened on June 6, 1944? Countless Allied (mostly American) troops stormed the beaches of Normandy in the D-Day invasion of World War II. Why did they do this? To protect their way of lives and their freedom. Many of those men died in that fight and in the rest of the battles of WW2 and the other campaigns that free people have waged throughout this (and previous) centuries.
If you don't want to run SETI@Home, then that's fine. Run whatever you'd like to, or run nothing at all. It's your computer, and it's your choice. However, you have to realize that others are by no means under any obligation to run the particular application that you have chosen for yourself. What they do with their CPU cycles is their choice, and they have the freedom to choose. That's the key word here: freedom.
You cite fighting cancer as a goal of yours. That is laudable. If you have any more spare time, you might want to volunteer some time at a veteran's hospital, or take a trip to Washington, D.C. to visit the Vietnam Memorial (or any of the other war memorials around the world.) If you remember that freedom has a price, you will not so flippantly scoff at people who have done nothing other than using their freedoms differently than you do. There's nothing wrong with that, and you would do well to remember that.
IN SOVIET RUSSIA 100 most promising contacts visit YOU.
Sure, if the SETI project gave conclusive proof that there was alien life, It would be a day that would go down in history.
But, it has to be rock solid proof. Not just a signal, we need a communication from another world. Otherwise CNN will have someone on there within the hour making up 50 other possibilities for the signal.
--ST
http://www.theMediaBunker.com
Maybe, maybe not.
While there are most likely no practical aspects (see note) to finding extraterrestrial intelligence, the psychological possibilities range from none to downright stunning. First and foremost would be the effects on religion, wiping away any vestige of a trace of Galileo's persecution, but probably kicking up a new fuss. Not to mention that religion is used as an excuse for a great number of today's world's ills. (Notice I said 'excuse', not 'cause.') Second might well be a push to 'measure up' to the other example of intelligence.
Note: As for practical aspects, what if we found they were broadcasting information. Trojan Horse stories like Cosmos and Species abound. Stories have also keyed on the problems of being handed technology rather than discovering it.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
that one is my mom's phone number! What is going on here?
I don't keep a lid on my coffee so when I walk around I look busy -me
"We send you this message in order to have your advice..."
There are two things I'd really like to take a look at, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
First, there is a program that can convert the work unit files into a wav file. I think it would be pretty cool to listen to some of these top 100 signals. I've played with the program on quite a few work units and never been able to hear anything but static. As strong as the top 100 signals are, you should actually be able to hear something.
Second, there are a few places on seti's and related sites that show a picture of what a good signal looks like. Why don't they take a grad student and make him run through the top 100 signals and record what the graphics look like when it is processed?
I've actually emailed them before and requested both of these. I've never gotten a response nor have they posted either. If they have, then I've just missed it.
If I drive fast enough at the red light, it'll appear green.
100 Best Singles!... Thats what i'm Talking about!.. 100 hot alien singles with hot alien bod's and hot.... uh... oh.... signals.... dang..
never mind....
"just another ugly toad waiting for a kiss from a princess"
A radio signal is likely to be the first known contact with alien life.
There is no telling if the SETI@Home process will be the means of picking up that signal. But, the odds are actually quite good.
The problem is that no one knows how long it will take to find it (or them). But, in the end the chances of success are great. One day on the big dish could be like looking out into your neighborhood and expecting to see a new neighbor unloading their Ryer Van. One day is likely to be a bust. But, that does not mean it is not the right thing to do.
Chances are that we will be communicating with aliens via radio for thousands of years before we visit them or they visit us. It is a simple factor of how difficult the alternative tasks are. Radio communication is relatively easy. And, even if radio waves take some time to transverse the space it is so much more likely than a physical movement.
We will hear from them if they exist. Whether this current SETI project will do so is simply unknown.
NexuSys - Linux support by the best
Wouldn't it suck if the 101st most insteresting signal was actually created by aliens? I guess it'd be too bad they didn't make the cut.
When is RIAA gonna realise that aliens are broadcasting radio signals free of charge and start collecting royalty fees on all of the signals ever processed by SETI@Home?
?Who controls the past now, controls the future.
Who controls the present now controls the past.?
Okay, this may be a bit offtopic, but I have to mention it:
When SETI@Home says claims to have millions of users, I hope they don't count the unused accounts. I'll tell you why:
I once created one account by mistake back in '98 when I installed SETI on one of the servers at work (hehe, don't tell my boss). This account has been unused since then, and only three packets was submitted packets to it. According to SETI@Home, this account has processed more packets than 46.714% of all users.
-skurk
www.6502asm.com - Code 6502 assembly or.. DIE!!
So we little green aliens go to all the trouble to put the
transmitter far away from any other radio sources (like stars
and galaxies) - we shift the frequency to compensate for the
orbit of your planet around your sun - we listen to your
transmissions and send ours back on channels we know you
must be listening to - and we get modded down for all of
those things? Damn!
So what DO we have to do to get more Karma at Seti?
www.sjbaker.org
There ain't no life but here on earth; not so much as a microbe anywhere else.
As with UFOlogy, SETI-like efforts will continue ad infinitum cuz you can't prove a negative.
-- BYTEBuG
Actually, I was thinking that SETI@Home should not only "revisit its 100 most promising signal candidates" but burn them onto a CD-ROM set and make a deal with the record company whose name is synonomous with compilations, K-Tel, to sell them. The perfect gift for the geek who has everything...
GMD
watch this
Ton ten alien signals, as voted by you:
.,.
,:.
.,,
,.,
.:.
,-
.;,
;;.
Could this signal be ET? - you decide.
10.
No, this is not a mistake - it could be Darth Vader calling in the storm troopers:
9.
Earth to shuttle - do you copy?
8. .
Na-Noo Na-Noo - Beam me up!
7.
Make it so, Number One!
6.
Shazzbot!
5.
Watch out - looks like The Borg is about to attack:
4.
This one was sent in by a one-legged boy from New Mexico:
3.
This promising signal comes all the way from SOVIET RUSSSIA! Watch out you crazy Leninist cowboy!
2. _;.
And finally - the most promising signal of all - Diggity Diggity - could it be you, Dr. Theopolis?
1. %!?
Dear Sir/Madam/Globunsk/Srhamel/Goot:
:)
I'm the ruler of Andromeda-3, an M Class Planet in the constellation of Andromeda. My father, the fifth ruler in the Pfthoskkkrkfhhdfkfk dinasty has been robbed. If you could lend me your intergalactic bank account so I can transfer my funds to Alpha Centauri...
BINGO!
A signal of this type would have to be directly targeted at the Earth by intelligent creatures. The alien scientist must have detected Earth's presence, and orbit (and perhaps they've picked up some "I Love Lucy" to prove we're intelligent... Erh...). They then sent a special, compensated transmission ment for us, and us only. And they must have been doing this for an extended amount of time.
Maybe such a signal might be just slightly interesting? Perhaps this is why SETI bumps any signal of this kind to the top?
That's why SETI call it a "Magic Signal". It's a clear attempt of a fellow civilization to contact us, specifically.
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
It may take hundreds or thousands of years of searching to find a signal from an alien civilizaion. The odds are just as likely that we may find one the first day but take hundreds or thousands of years to decipher it.
"You have been trolled. Have a nice day."
I object to the comment below this one.
If you open your mind too wide, people will throw trash in it.
The signal analyzes you!
i mean..
Fef ghsafs kbvlknwn gas!
The interesting part about attitudes towards SETI is what they say about our own future. What is happening with our civilization? Where will we be in 100 years? In 1000?
Many people are pessimistic. They think we're bad and getting worse. They expect that we will destroy ourselves soon, or sink into a dark age, or otherwise lose the ability to communicate with the stars. So they can imagine a galaxy full of life but not much of it communicating at any given time.
But let's suppose that things continue on as they have. Look at the grand sweep of human history. We see a continual growth of capability and power. Even a poor person today in the West has technology which would have been unavailable to the richest person in the world 100 years ago.
Imagine that this continues to happen. Technology not only advances, it speeds up. The next 100 years bring more changes than the last 1000 years. Nanotechnology, biotech, AI, physics advances; we could be living like gods in 100 years.
And let's assume that social trends continue. Racism and sexism was ubiquitous 100 years ago. Now they are recognized as great evils. As our power grows and our moral sensitivity increases, we will want to help those less fortunate than ourselves. We will end poverty and suffering among humans, because it will be easy compared to the power we have. We will turn to the higher animals, and do what we can to improve their lives as well.
And we will turn outwards. We will reach out into the galaxy with communications and explorations. It will take centuries, millennia, but as our capabilities grow we will eventually find even the great interstellar distances easy to cross. We will search the galaxy for life, ready to cherish and protect anything that we find. And if we could meet a culture less advanced than our own, we would do what we could to ease their suffering while still respecting their chosen path.
This may seem like an absurdly optimistic vision, but it's nothing different from what has happened in the past! Anyone who looks with clear eyes at the record of human history and who extrapolates it forward should see this as a very plausible and likely future path. The reason that it's not explored much in literature is because there aren't that many dramatic possibilities in a world which is as much improved over the present as our own world is over the past.
The point is that if this is the likely path for a civilization, it would suggest that other cultures in the galaxy would also be spreading outward and would probably be here by now. The fact that we don't see them, that we stumble along and still suffer great and preventable catastrophes, suggests that really life is not so prevalant in the galaxy after all.
So ironically, both the optimistic and the pessimistic view of humanity's future suggest that SETI won't work. The pessimists believe that any advanced culture will wipe itself out; and the optimists believe that such a civilization will spread through the galaxy and render aid to less developed worlds. Either way we won't find intelligent signals on our expensive radio telescopes.
What are the odds of a random collision of atoms of a certain solar system producing life?
What are the odds of a random string of radio signals mimicking life?
If B>A, we have some problems.
Seems like we're looking in the wrong place. If we're interested in finding an advanced starfaring civilization, can't we just look for strong signals that aren't coming from near a star?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Jam a bit of turned steel into her ear and she'll get a fix on those aliens faster than you can say "Hailing frequencies open..."
You must think in Russian.
what if the ETs broadcast in visible light space and see the Radio wavelengths? Assuming life is going to be like us in any way is kind of... arrogant, don't you think?
First off, without much risk of anthropomorphising extraterrestrial life. You have almost a 33/33/33 spread between likely candidates for intelligent life:
One, they're going to be quite a bit behind us in technology, and haven't developed radio broadcasting technology yet.
Two, they're at parity with us, which means we won't be picking up any broadcasts anytime soon, in fact, we may have to monitor radio signals for the next thousand years (even if we advance to better methods of communication, which then involves using some equipment that'll be centuries obsolete- That takes real determination).
Three, they're considerably ahead of us, and while only a couple hundred light years away, have developed radio communications hundreds of years before we had the technology to listen for it, resulting in the signals being missed by mere decades.
As for the assumptions, what is the possibility that they are using methods that we haven't even tried/discovered yet? Quite high. For the purpose of interstellar communications, you would need a signal that's fairly free of distortion from nearby stellar bodies, and can maintain a fair signal strength over several light years of distance. Also, hypothetically, the signal would have to maintain coherance without significant degradation due to moving at FTL travel, if said hypothetical ETs have such. Radio waves in theory would have this problem, therefore they would be inappropriate for this use.
Now assuming such a technology exists out there, then there's almost zero chance of our picking up a significant trace, because as we ourselves have demonstrated, when a method of communication goes obsolete, why bother going back?
For example, how many still use wireless telephone systems (the old transponder based systems that amounted to an overpriced CB, with a paid operator on the other end to dial the phone numbers for you, in use before the mid 80s)? None. Even though said systems can be used today, it's unlikely anyone would want to, when there are cheaper and easier systems in use.
This, in sum, is the flawed assumption that most ET research is based on. Looking for species as advanced as ours or better, using an outmoded form of communications that have been obsolescent for centuries or more by their standards.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Imagine some alien RIAA-like organization finds out about this SETI project that distributes their valuable inter-universal IP-protected radio signals to thousands of computers all over a damn whole planet!
Hopefully there's just a flat yearly fee we're allowed to pay to the broadcasters...
Their lawyers will go nuts if they ever find out.
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
Aricebo is, if I understand correctly, permanently built into the ground. It just scans whatever's directly overhead. Even the article says "It can never, however, go back and listen attentively to a particular promising signal, to determine whether it might possible be an intelligent transmission." So how do they propose to focus on these 100 signals? Wouldn't they have to wait a full, say, year or more, until all of the sky has passed overhead once?
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Empirically. You find places that it says there is life. Then, you go and check for life. The correlation ratio between the two sets of results should give a very good indication of the validity of said formula.
I know this was meant to be a joke, but at the same time, anyone that did high school math to any decent level, should know that when it comes to probability and statistics, "correlation does not mean causation". Just because A precedes B doesn't necessarily mean it causes C.
1. What is the sensitivity of the Arecibo Dish? 2. What would the power level of a 500 watt isotropic source at 3 GHz 70 light years away as seen from Earth? 3. What are SETI@Home's chances of success if NOBODY is intentionally pointing a high-gain antenna straight at our (future) location in space and firing off a couple of hundred million watts? 4. How much effective power would an RF source on one of Proxima Centauri's planets have to transmit in order for us to detect it?
You mean they're not monitoring red dwarfs? What smegheads.
Please enlighten me then....
Which right wing churches have decided that The Bible is not the absolute one and only truth (AKA Biblical In-Errancy).
Or is this a semantics issue? One of the characteristics of a "right Wing" church is a belief in (among other things) Biblical In-Errancy.
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
If SETI was on some alien planet, will they be able to detect earth? And from how far away would our signals be too faint to detect (assuming the signals were given time to propagate that far)?
That's the where the Vulcan homeworld is - known as the home of the funkiest party goers of the galaxy!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Is that the same as cowboynealcentric?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
A project like this http://www.coseti.org/ might succeed where radio SETI fails. Quite a few people think a focused, high power laser might be a better mode of communications between stars.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!