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SETI@Home Revisits Its 100 Best Signals

Posted by Hemos on from the one-from-the-vaults dept.

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."

2 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. Would they detect themselves? by wowbagger · · Score: 5, Interesting
    While I am a contributor to SETI@home, I have to wonder about the following question:
    "Given the rules they place on a signal, would SETI@Home have detected the past attempts we've made to contact other stars?"


    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?
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  2. More info on the top 100 by i8a4re · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.