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SETI@Home 2nd Look at Possible Hits
cpk0 writes "This article from MSNBC discusses how data returned from SETI@Home users is beign retested by the Institue for a possibility of alien radio signals being included. At just over 4 years old, I think this would be the first big break for SETI@home."
This is a followup to a December Slashdot story. Apparently this is getting some major attention in the mainstream media lately.
It would be nice to see more people running SETI@HOME to take advantage of those spare CPU cycles.
Maybe I'm being too poetic, but with a world on the brink of war, a confirmation of an alien civilization would be an amazing thing right now. Maybe give our leaders a kick in the ass that their petty squabbles are not the end all be all of our existence.
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
The probability of catching radio waves from intelligent life forms in a 4 year window is crazy. The distances they'd have to travel are enormous, and that civilization is probably long extinct, and the spectrum we are looking at is very narrow, and our definition of intelligence is also very narrow... what if what we think of cosmic background noise is in actuality encrypted data transmissions, meant to be indistinguishable from background noise? Too many assumptions are taking place, it's really a waste of resources.
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
There were so many well-publicized hacks to SETI@home that I'll bet that there will be a lot of skepticism about any results even if we discover a jpeg file of an Arcturian time machine in there.
I always thought that "settee at home" was a reference to armchair astronomers.
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
Picks up phone, "Hello?"
E.T., "Hi, mom? This is you long lost son--I need a ride!"
The only problem they have with Seti@home these days is the statistics.
I know a few people who actually compete over who has computed the most packets. People also try to cheat to get high stats, that is where it goes wrong...
Therefore it might be better to ditch those stats all together, or at least make them less informative...
End of message
Got better things to do with my time than to listen to infomercials. You got Paul Harvey doing his little infomercials, and in between them you get regular commercials.
We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
(Disclaimer: there might be bad physics involved in this posting)
When I startet this posting, I realized, that all bad jokes about Seti@home were already made and there is nothing more to invent left. Let's try a new approach:
Recounting? That reminds me of something...
Florida, I hear you calling. Will the number of Aliens found increase or decrease when you recount the number of blibs and blurbs coming out from the Universe? Will the Federal Court of the Universe stop this recount by a 5:3?
Well, if someone could finish this pointe.
Alien message decrypted: "Greetings. I am the Democratic, peaceloving, and openminded President Eroeg W. Hsub, from the plant Htrae. We will allow your planet to continue to produce weapons of Galatic Destruction, instead of wiping your puny solar system off the map.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
(from the article) "Our chances right now [of finding something] are small," SETI@home chief scientist Dan Werthimer said in a telephone interview. "But you have to plan for success"
He continued: "and in this case, success would mean an intergalactic war that would result in the destruction of entire galaxies. We have already begun training our astrosoldiers in the art of zero-G warfare, but chances of defeating the alien menace is slim. I for one welcome our new alien overlords... Hail ants."
"Probably the toughest time in anyone's life is when you have to murder a loved one because they're the devil." -Philips
Why are those men with the dark glasses pointing walkie-talkies at ET and Henry?!!!"
"Why don't you grow a set Timmy, and go play with your GI Joe?
You pansey little shit!"
Did anyone else get a message indicating their machine processed a packet of interest and requesting contact information for the media?
Someone in the Pleiades needs help moving 50 billion quatloos out of a forgotten government bank account, and they want Earth to help.
I don't know, I used to be so interested in SETI, but in the last few years I've lost all enthusiasm for it. I guess because, ultimately, I don't think its likely that intelligent civilizations are very dense out there, and if they did, we'd probably never recognize the signal...and if we did, I'd say, 'okay, now what? We still have to go on living alone because we can't talk back and forth, so it's even more disappointing to know they exist but are unreachable.' We'll probably destroy ourselves before that's an issue, anyway.
Besides MSNBC, other medias are *revisiting* the SETI@home project. Read for instance this Space.com article, published yesterday (March 10, 2003). Tariq Malik wrote: "Researchers spearheading a worldwide effort to find ET, or anyone else out in space besides us humans, plan to revisit a group of their most likely candidate radio signals using the world's largest radio telescope." He added that "the Arecibo Observatory will work for three and a half days, starting March 18, to revisit the candidate signals identified by SETI@home users."
As someone who scanned that part of the sky for seti@athome (so to speak), I got a mail from our berkelean chums, suggesting that a lot of media interest might be forthcoming. I mentally scoffed at the possibility, but here I am talking about it on a *cough* reputable site like slashdot!
seti - acting under the auspices of the planetary society - were kind enough to ask whether I'd like my fifteen minutes now, and make my name available for interview to those legions of reporters who'd be after a human interest angle.
Of course, 'human interest' is exactly not the reason I signed up for seti@home, but there you go. Nonetheless, I volunteered, just in case they want a European perspective. However, I really, really doubt that anything will come of it. Just like a seti user should.
It's been known for a while that the SETI@Home has nothing to do with finding aliens but is used for target calculations by US "Intelligence".
A lot of $$$ saved on free processing power.
So why don't you open up your box to help out?
you have to admit that the Crab nebula is the better nebula for rapping, because nebula rhymes with -- oh.
Dear Mr Seti@home project leader,
we can tell for sure that your software needs some serious revision because as it is it doesn't work well in finding alien lifeforms.
Respectfully yours,
Alf
Mork
E.T.
Chewbecca
Yoda
Spock
Signatures are for stupids.
It's not really a 4 year window. You can sample 10 seconds of data and the time origin of the information that reaches you in that period can range from a year to many billions of years.
No doubt actually finding and verifying(good luck) alien signals would a great discovery. But at the same the practically speaking its a complete waste. All of these people could and should be donating to something like Folding or some other distributed effort that actually will probably help humanity by finding a cure for cancer or some other disease. But I guess actually helping your fellow humans is less glamourous then being the first nerd or geek to discover some faint signal which when discovered probably won't even be accepted by the rest of the world and will be debated forever.
Seti being first and all earned its user base, but since other more practical and worthy uses for distributed computing have come about its time to shift resources to tasks which will actually may improve the world's quality of life.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
People could lend their cpu cycles helping something worthwhile out Folding @ home instead of looking for something that isn't there. Helping the fight against diseases like Alzheimer and Parkinson is a lot more rewarding than looking for little green men.
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
or they are running out of money, and need some more.
"Hey...that data sounds just like a....Higgs Boson!"
is that even if we pick up Alien Superbowl XII, religious fools will not shut up.
As long as it's not "suttee at home", I think we're fine.
Just an idea...
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
Now what?
Any transmission there and back will have a 6k year life span. That's far to great of a distance for us to explore yet, and far to much of a time to comprehend between signals. So how will we deal with another society 17,597,088,000,000,000 miles away?
My pessimism says we let it divide us even more. Some will claim it as Atlantis, others will see it as home of the Aliens that have abducting them. The religious zealots will condemn, and our government will try and ignore it.
My optimism hopes that it will inspire us to space. Give us a goal worthy of sending Humans to, and something that will also inspire kids to get more involved in Science.
I know that there has been much written about what a positive result in this search would mean to society, but I'm wondering if anyone else has their own thoughts?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
There is also an article here.
"No! All your base are belong to us!"
while(get.nextIpAddress()) { if (downloadedSETISoftware==true) intelligentLifeFound=false; }
What
No big deal... It's probably just Zaphod asking if anyone has any mixers.
I take drugs seriously.
but if we find a message from some alien it will be the blueprints of some machine that when built and activated will turn out to be a trojan horse that will flood our planet with syrup mmmm syrup
Too bad for the U.S. government, because they opted to discontinue funding SETI in the 1990s. It is now a private, non-profit corporation using donations from such tech luminaries as both Hewlett and Packard, and Paul Allen.
So, even if the gummint *wanted* to squelch a SETI discovery, they wouldn't be able to, because it's totally out of their hands now.
I was pissed when congress cut SETI spending (the way it happened was a total farce), but I have to admit in hindsight, it's about the best thing that ever happened to them.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Just a lucky guess I suppose.
What do you mean you've never been to Alpha Centuri?!!!
If you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, then that's your own lookout. "
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The fact that we're still using screen savers on non-monochrome monitors is proof we're not advanced enough for first contact.
just be sure to pass that stuff around so we can all have a puff...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
The parent comment seems to be one of about three comments that is directly commenting on the current slashdot article. All the other highly moderated comments are discussing general SETI activities, and even the war on Iraq. And yet the parent comment has been moderated Redundant.
I didn't used to believe SexyGal when she said she was being moderated unfairly, but now I do.
Don't help them! They want to track down escaped aliens and do bad things to them!
Thanks.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
The aliens are broadcasting the cure for cancer?
Saying that everyone should just be looking for the cure to cancer is just another form of putting all your eggs in one basket. You can't really say what you would learn from analysing alien signals.
Plus, the discovery of alien life would have a vastly more profound influence on the human race as a whole than helping the small percentage of the earth who contract serious diseases like cancer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Might be kind of tough to keep under wraps. One of the things that has to be done to confirm a "hit" is that someone other than your team has to be able to replicate your results.
With the way that Seti@home works, that confirmation would effectively require that someone who has agreeded to interupt whatever radio astronomy project they happen to be working on, and happens to be pointing at the right area of the sky, to do that and do what they can to check that star.
Part of the problem is that about all Seti@home can do is identify that there may be a signal there. It is not designed to collect or analyze content.
The "results" so far provide a list of stars that have a higher probability of being a signal source.
-Rusty
You never know...
What if we are all dead by the time the aliens come???
Lets cure cancer first!!
What, me Tweet?
Why would anyone need SETI@home to distract people when you have unecessary wars and Hollywood?
If extraterrestrial civilizations use ( used) the type of com systems that we are deploying today, what are the chances that we would be able to recognize it as the product of intelligence?
At just over 4 years old, I think this would be the first big break for SETI@home.
You mean you think that discovering alien radio transmissions would be a big break for SETI? Sheesh. Whatever, man. I guess you're definition of "big break" isn't as demanding as mine.
--
excerpt from wired
"Lighten Up, Carl: Remember when we reported on Carl Sagan's new nickname over at Apple Computer (for your edification, it was "butthead astronomer." Apple developers had code-named a secret new computer "Sagan," only to be threatened by Sagan's lawyers that the use of his name on a product, even in prototype stage, was infringement). Well, ol' Carl's now suing Apple for libel, claiming that the "butthead astronomer" moniker is defamatory and subjects him to "hatred, contempt, ridicule, and obloquy." The Wall Street Journal pointed out that the outcome of the case will hinge on the definition of "butthead." Thanks for helping us understand, Carl. "
I forgot the right title for my post...
March 10 -- Researchers spearheading a worldwide effort to find E.T., or anyone else out in space besides us humans, plan to revisit a group of their most likely candidate radio signals using the world's largest radio telescope.
THE SETI@HOME PROGRAM, a distributed computing effort that uses the personal computers of millions of volunteers to examine radio signal data, is planning a stellar countdown to check the extraterrestrial-potential of up to 150 radio signals detected with the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.
The signal batch is cream of a candidate crop of 5 billion radio observations pulled from the SETI@home network, which program organizers will recheck to see if they are strong enough to be an extraterrestrial communiqué, repeating and emanating from portions of sky bearing sunlike stars and planets.
"Our chances right now [of finding something] are small," SETI@home chief scientist Dan Werthimer said in a telephone interview. "But you have to plan for success."
The Arecibo Observatory will work for three and a half days, starting March 18, to revisit the candidate signals identified by SETI@home users. In addition to onsite analysis, each of the new observations will also be fed into the global program for a more detailed examination, Werthimer said.
Launched in May 1999, SETI@home uses the computers of 4 million astronomy buffs in 226 countries. Together they act as a supercomputer, collectively sifting through the 35 terabytes of raw data collected by the 1,000-foot (305-meter) Arecibo dish and reporting the results to the program headquarters at the University of California at Berkeley. One terabyte is about the equivalent of 231 million pages of typed text, but SETI@home volunteers received a fraction of that -- 350 kilobytes -- at a time to examine.
Volunteers download a screensaverlike program that examines Arecibo radio observations while the computer user is away. Once the analysis is complete -- varying from a few hours to a few days, depending on the computing power of each machine -- the program alerts the user and sends the examined material to SETI@home researchers via the Internet.
"It was always the idea to revisit observations once the first analysis was complete," said Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, SETI@home's founding and primary sponsor. "The question is, are these signals really good enough? That's still an unknown, and it's what this next phase of the program is going to tell us."
SETI@home is an extraterrestrial search effort separate from the SETI Institute, a group that pursues several scientific and education projects aimed at the discovering intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Space.com has a partnership with the SETI Institute.
© 2003 Space.com. All rights reserved.
Slow news day finds lazy reporter surfing slashdot for something to write about.
I think we have a new phenomenon starting here:
First slashdot posts a small story about something vaguely scientific or geekish. Eventually, a lazy reporter slightly drunk from his usually liquid lunch reads the story with one eye closed. Proceeds to write puff piece weaving elements from the story and slashdot user's commentaries into a drunken slurry of double vision inspired verbosity. After waking up at 3 am with his head on the keyboard, drunken reporter deletes the last paragraph, which ended with a;hkjhgdferuh (because his head was on the keyboard and he can't remember what it was supposed to say) and puts it in a pile on his fat, baliding editors desk. The fat balding news editor, whose fat because he eats chocolate and bald because of genetics, reads it on a slow news day, laughs his fat az off and decides to run it anyways. Slashdot editor, who suffers from the same problems as the news editor but for different reasons, reads the headline and proceeds to post the story.
Wash-Rinse-Repeat.
Now if only the follow up to the follow up stories and posts would present better information than we might be on to something.
The Polemarch is expected to hold a press conference this afternoon.
This is a silly attitude, as are all of the "you're wasting your time" posts...
;)
People are allowed to do what they please. It's less INTERESTING to them to donate their cycles to folding or UD than to SETI (I would posit it's hardly glamourous). If we're arguing practical likelihood of finding an answer, foldingathome isn't actually solving anything, it's just testing the efficacy of an algorithm that may one day be employed to possibly solve a problem. An undefined biology problem. Cosmetics perhaps. I'm sure what the UD Cancer research actually does, either. Something for Oxford if I recall, but regardless: the "keyspace" for these projects (if they are even actually searching a worthwhile keyspace) is just as large as SETI's, and in all cases, we don't even know if a solution exists. At least with distributed.net you know a solution is out there.
If we're talking altruism-worth, how much money have you spent on your computer gear? Why aren't you spending it on the humanitarian efforts against AIDS in Africa? Why aren't you a UN peace officer getting ready for the likely humanitarian efforts in Iraq? I mean, <whatever charity you may support> being the first one you ran into an all, may have earned your money, but there are plenty of MORE IMPORTANT causes that may actually make a difference. If it wasn't so GLAMOUROUS to donate to the <whatever> fund, maybe you'd be kissing babies in Namibia. Or not.
Don't judge other people's efforts to be charitable. Be thankful they're doing anything out of the kindness of their hearts, and try to be a better person yourself. Word.
-Greg
-Greg
I didn't used to believe SexyGal when she said she was being moderated unfairly, but now I do.
What're the chances that you are just SexyGal (/ekrout?) posting as an AC just to try and fight the moderation... probably 95%?
We should dedicate some spare CPU cycles to try and fight unfair moderation, he, right AC?
Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
I'm sure we'll find that those pesky aliens just encoded an alien goatse jpg into a radio wave and sent it to us so we could compare.
Yay, aliens slashdotters are no different, what did you think ?
Lemme guess...
"Send money, food, toilet paper"...
Your son.. University of Iowa.
He fantasized science fiction?
Need I say more?
"I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
Greetings, earthling!
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data returned from SETI@Home users is beign retested
Too bad that those CPU cycles can't be used for spellchecking Slashdot submissions.
the signals will be calls to American Idol.
Advance note to comic book guy:
Yeah, yeah, I do know they couldn't have received those TV signals from Earth yet.
Go ask about unnecessary wars in a NY fire station. Please.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Just because there might be a million computers doing SETI it does not mean they are a million times more effective that one computer doing SETI...To me SETI is a concept that sounds fascinating, it is easy to implement, provides great exposure to the university and people doing it yet in the end I just do not see how real science can come out of it.
Consider the time it takes to synchronize all that data, the time it takes to recheck and validate the results, the costst associated with the bandwith, storage etc... consider the hacks and tricks people play for fun
Why not take a 100 node beowulf cluster, optimize the searching code using the best and most effective techniques, fire it up and let it run. It will beat millions of computers all doing some small redundant parts of the same problem. It will still be cheaper thatn SETI@home. We all grew up with the story of the tortoise and the hare, but the rabbits in science do not go to sleep... In that case we all know how the story would have ended.
But it is not like SETI should be shut down. No other project provides more effective outreach and involves the public the way SETI does. Even if it just an illusion, keep it running folks. h.
What about sending out our own space signals??
We have been sending out weak radio and TV signals into the universe for over 50 years now ( and more...) However, I doubt that any of these same signals coming from other solar systems would be detectable by us.
Instead of listening in to E.T. - Why don`t we go ahead and beam out stronger signals to `local` planets that would seem like likely candidates to harbor civilizations. For instance, http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~mwm/planet.html, these seem like they could be potentially good targets.
It could be, like SETI, a joint effort too. In order to sustain the signal on a certain timeframe, specific dishes around the planet set up by amateurs and universities could be responsible for targetting specific planets for a number of days(hard due to earth's rotation). A central team would be responsible for targets and messages sent while others executed.
I have sent this to the SETI institute as an idea, but never received a reply. If you agree that this is an interesting idea, maybe you could interest them in it too.
http://www.seti-inst.edu/email.html
Thanks.
Okay, let me rephrase ...
Can you name one single article published in a refereed scientific journal written by Sagan, or that directly quotes Sagan's work as a scientist (not opinion writer)?
Writing your thought and ideas is far from real science, which requires your thoughts and ideas to stand up to peer review. Sagan conveniently by-passed that step, yet is considered 'a great scientist.'
Regards....
Computational Chemistry products and services.
Every star within even remote communication distance has been checked for the slightlest possibility of life. Doesn't exist. So best case scenario is we find one 1000 light years away. Great. So ask them all your insightful questions, and, after they learn English (or whatever you ask them in), they'll get back to you. See you in a few millennia.
I mean, shit, even if there were intelligent life on alpha centauri, it would take an 8-year turnaround...and there isn't life there.
I'm all for optimism and all, but at some point ya have to actually think about this shit. Chances of finding life is slim, chances of knowing it when you find it is slimmer, chances of them explaining all of life's mysteries to us is nonexistent. So yeah, I think Folding@home is a helluva lot better as a project, because SETI isn't anything but a replacement religion for those who like believing in benevolent, omniscient aliens rather than a God.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
You spend your spare cycles on something I think is important, and I'll save on electricity and turn my computer off.
That sounds like a much better idea.
heh, like when we were all kids, and got our Star Wars stuff together:
"I have Chewbacca!"
"EVERYBODY has Chewbacca"
"Oh, well, I have R5D4!"
"Yeah, I got two of those.. one's pink now. I left it in the sun."
Wouldn't it royally suck if it started with some alien bitching because he can't get High Speed "TimmyNet" Access because the local phonophone company has a monopoly?
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
is Ms. Foster ready?
Dammit, I wish we'd build the Macross Fleet BEFORE we advertised our position to the rest of the univers, y'know?
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Please stop sending up those #$*!@$ ant farms!
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
Dear Slashdot, SETI has been sending me encrypted alien messages hoping that my experience in cryptology would help unravel the mystery of our alien friends. I have always had a suspicion that a more advanced race would not encrypt their message, but rather compress them and what I have found is freakishly disturbing. When you take the static noise, and break the frequency into two groups, a high pitched group and low pitched group, and then assign a bit to each group, you can create a binary file from the recorded transmission. If you take several of these transmission binaries and name them in a trans.rar, trans.r01, trans.r02, fashion and then run them through WinRar, you get a big blob of uncompressed binary data. To my surprise, I named the newly created file to test.mp3 and gave WinAMP a try... The message is distorted a bit, the voices are scratchy and hard to make out, but if you listen closely, you can hear the following phrase repeated over and over:
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
There's no place like ~/
I didn't used to believe SexyGal when she said she was being moderated unfairly, but now I do.
Yeah sure, you and all the other trolls make the claim.
Boo Hoo.
..Nuff said.
(sorry if i misspelled it, i have only read the Finnish version)
Bot Assisted Blogging
I think if we had an obvious proof of a civilisation so "near" from us a lot of governement woudl begin seriously of a way to make space defense, protect Sol system, while other would be smithing plan to invade or send (gasp) missionar there and convert people to the true and only god (insert name here : christ, allah, jeovah,Shiva, goublibougah).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Hello. How are you? My name is Jerry.
"First post!"
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
On the new Trek IV DVD, the trivia subtitles reference a display at Uhura's station, explaining the technical details of a spectrum analyzer, then adds "Or she might be running the SETI@Home screensaver."
Thought that was a pretty cool reference.
"..and that's how you cure cancer!"
Delicious!
i heard a while ago that SETI@home only had this year left to live with funds... anyone else think this a bit suss?
alien: "bladerunner 0087 of sector 1435 dispatched for cleaning of runaway unit known as michael jackson aka wacko jacko. unit is considerd a total freak."
Why not the other distributed projects that go toward finding a cure for Cancer or AIDS?
I'm no mathmatician (sp?), but I think it's safe to say that we'll all be better off finding cures to diseases than finding another race that is either non existant, or choosing not to be found.
...if the aliens had some form of "Prime Directive" that would prevent them from sharing any of their knowledge with us... I'm thinking of that heartless "Enterprise" epsiode where Archer finally made the decision NOT to help that spacefaring species cure their fatal (to their species) genetic disease in favor of letting the dimwitted simpleton species inherit their *earth* from it... However, it would be funny if they challenged on *prior art* grounds all of Microsoft's IP and then the whole company got carted away, to be used for food for the lizard aliens far far away... And that's why I run SETI! (spare the Xbox division though) ...I wanna see Diana in all her 80's glory hair, cleavage, and red leather outfit!
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
The best Jack Handey I ever heard went like this:
One day my son asked me "why does it rain?" I told him it rained when God was crying. Then he said "why would God cry?" and I told him "Oh, probably because of something you did."
My motto is: Never give up - unless it's harder than you want it to be.
Now let's assume SETI breaks the news -- they've found a difinitive signal and have proven it to originate well out of our solar system. Now the cryptographers and linguistics pro's are on the case. How long before the public cries foul and demands the transmission be released to the public so we can all take a crack at it (SETI@Home2?).
Now skip forward a bit and someone translates the message. What then? Do we all just sort-of say, "hey...cool" and carry on with what we're doing? I guess it would depend on what the message said. Let's say the SETI team translates the message, and the news it's transmitting ain't pretty -- would they tell the world?
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
I'm wondering what the *ramifications* would be if the SETI Institute marketed a peripheral accessory kit that would take sample information on its users and then uploaded it to their server and then was beamed out into the cosmos. You know, like a home anal probing kit! Just think what the Zeta Riticulans could do with that info! No more tales of weird abductions of hillbillies or ignant 3rd World peoples who still haven't invented a plow or the wheel on their own... I think I'll patent the device using USB 1.1, USB 2.0, Firewire and Firewire800, Blue*toof*, and all versions of 802.11 for the computer interface... But something tells me Warren Cuccurulo is already working on it...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
"It's hard to believe that entire families can be torn apart by something as simple as wild dogs."
SETI is miles from serious or useful science. It's odds of success are, pardon the pun, astronomical. It's methods are questionable. The fact that it's rechecking some data isn't even remotely significant. I mean, I suppose with six billion people in the world, it's not that big a waste of time to have a few of them looking for space aliens. I'm less fond of SETI@Home, but only because there are so many more productive applications of the same theory. Punch data on medical research, for Christ's sake. Much better thing to do with your spare CPU cycles.
As for the slam on Sagan... the fact of the matter is that Sagan, although a very good writer, made a nasty habit of blurring the line between science and politics. He is less a scientist and more an entertainer who positioned himself as a scientist. His audience was never academics and scholars. SETI was a project designed for armchair scientists and people watching TV. Not for serious study.
There. Maybe that one'll just be "troll" instead of "flamebait".
Philip Sandifer's academic website
Considering up till Seti@home came along, ask anyone what distributed computing was and they'd scratch their head and say "I donno" "Worthwhile" endevors cannot begin until somebody completes the ground work and research. I think the Seti@home program is brilliant, even though I support UD cancer project now. They created a simple piece of software and for the cost of a few servers and bandwidth they ended up with one of the most powerful computers on the planet. Doesn't exactly sound like a waste of time to me. Once individuals, schools, research orginizations, and companies saw the potential of such a system and what kind of support it could receive, a great deal has been invested in projects that are "worthwhile". So don't knock the inovators they opened the door for everyone else to step through.
The Daily Telegraph reported on February 16th that billionaire James
Packer has left Scientology.
"'He's out of it,' confirmed one mate, who did not wish to be named, but
who insisted the billionaire media boss had cut all ties with the Church
of Scientology. Packer, 34, started attending classes at the Church of
Scientology in Sydney last year after close friend Tom Cruise introduced
him to the religion. Just last month, Packer the younger flew to New
Zealand to catch up with Cruise, who is shooting The Last Samurai in the
North Island. But his dalliance with the celebrity-driven religion is
definitely over, insiders assert."
Message-ID: 80ee9418.0302161938.209b4d81@posting.google.com
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EOM.. p.s Why must I be barraged with MS VS nonsense on this site?
Past Projects:
Seti@home 4400cpu-hours
Presently:
United Devices 5400cpu-hours
Anthrax - completed
Cancer & Small Pox - running
You got Paul Harvey doing his little infomercials, and in between them you get regular commercials.
Haven't you just described all of American mass media?
Journalism? Journalism in AMERICA? It's now called MARKETING.
It's a CookBook!!!
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
That is by far the stupidest thing i've ever read on slashdot. What do firefighters who were injured in New York after a terrorist attack by Saudi Arabia have to do with Bush going against the UN to invade Iraq?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Newsflash: Over 3 Million humans converted to the Church of Luke Skywalker of Latter Day Saints...
can I use the force too?
Fight or flight its all the same
Live to die another day
--Ryan
music is the only thing that keeps me on this god damned rock any more...sure i COULD be throwing caution to the wind running through the cold winter night so that i can become more physically fit so that i can singlehandedly win the war against the Americans, and then swim all the way across back the ocean so that i can bring strange european flowers back to my exigirlfreind who would then promptly have her life made better by me being in it again after saving the world ---- but unfortunately after a full day of study, philosophy class and fixing my Windows 3.1 box, i'm beat. i'm just out of inspiration. there's no real reason why i should continue any more, after all...
Why am i in university? i thought i was going to be enlightened - only i didn't realize that this it's a cold barren journey across places i'd never travel across - a mind numbing process, the acedemics have for ages been known for their ability to systematically remove anything of talent from their ranks - i work for The Man, i don't do anything all day but study...but turning the music volume up to 8 on my new Tool-AENEMA CD makes at least this day Livable. Sure, i waste some time at slashdot which i could be doing otherwise...but after a day of philosophy i find it hard to resist challanging other's opinions on matters which have nothing to do with anything...and to otherwise take up the ranks of conversation in hope that i may say something meaningful to someone else, and accomplish my goals of philosophy in some way other than reading some essay by Moore or Chrisholm or other...
i'll tell you why i'm wasting my time. i'm pacing myself. I've burned out far too many times to count, and i know right well that if you extend yourself too far you will not only do nothing productive - but you will also snap in your mindset. Jello Biafra outlined the process pretty well in his Saskatoon, Saskatchewan apperance in think in january 2002. once you burn yourself out you become one of those cold bitter people who is EXACTLY WHAT YOU WERE TRYING TO FIGHT TO BEGIN WITH. it's dialectic, and observable throughout the ages. there's no real reason why i can fight thousands of years of human history - i know my limits. i do what i can, and fight where i may. let god sort em out. i've had enough of this life thing, anyway.
so all you people out there - take my advice...you don't have to be a hardcore vegan uberactivist direct action hero. do what you can, and pace yourself. people have been fighting 'the good fight' for years, and little progress has been made. treat yourself to a good album every now and then. i'd reccomend Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon for a good start. [i'd highly suggest not getting stoned, but 'whatever get's you through the night'.]
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
How does the atmosphere effect how sound travels. I know sound travels differently underwater, so I was wondering what happens in a vacuum, or in different atmospheres.
How come radio waves can travel in a vacuum(In Space) but sound waves can't? Or am I wrong?
And yes, I know, nobody can hear you scream in space. But it seems, nobody can hear me scream on Earth(or least nobody reacts to me).
Weee, they mentioned my ./ post on the screen savers!!! I wish they would say who submited those, but oh well, at least i can feel special!
I don't know why you were rated troll. I'm sure sorry I didn't vote (no I don't live in Florida), and I will be doing my part in the next election. At the time it was like "how much worse could Bush be than Gore?" .. and now we know :-)
Face it, we all want to believe in the (nice) alien next door. Heck, I want to believe, too.
But then, let's see. Suppose there IS indeed an intelligent alien civilization nearby. Can we actually detect it with SETI? Yes, but only provided that:
AND
So we're looking for very intelligent aliens that are particularly clueless. A convention of intergalactic Microsoft developers, maybe? (Naah. That would not be likely to remain undetected. Think of the size of the egos.)
So while I strongly believe we aren't alone in the universe, I think that SETI is not going to give any result. It's a waste. Quasar1999 is bloody right.
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Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
You can aim at a star system, hoping that there are aliens inhabiting the star system, but that makes the assumption that the aliens haven't closed off their sun using a dyson sphere.
To find the really interesting, advanced aliens, you have to listen where there is no bright star. The reason for building a dyson sphere is not only to silence all emissions, it's to recover every last joule of energy from the sun, instead of just letting it escape into space.
There's a slight chance that a star in the process of being dysoned can be spotted, though it's anyone's guess how long the aliens would take to dyson wrap their sun. You might have to watch a star for years or centuries. On the other hand, anyone with a telescope and a camera might be able to spot that.
On a more serious note, anyone knows, with our current radio-telescope technology, from what distance could we still detect the current background noise (TV, radio...) that the Earth emits ? 1 light-year ? One Hundred ? It's an inverse square law, yes, but you also get plenty of same freqs from different countries interfering together once you get far enough. My guess is that satellite transmissions would go pretty far since they are targetted beams...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
As I suggested, go debate the fine point of this in a NY fire station. If you ever regain consciousness, you will have a clear understanding about what one has to do with the other.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Actually, it's not naivete, it's careful reasoning. Let me explain.
I don't think it's necessary to assume a civilization will have "buttoned up" their transmission. All I am saying is that we'll not be able to tell them apart from noise.
To understand this, take a look at radio technology here on Earth.
What we observe on earth is that after about a century of radiotransmissions, we have advanced the use of spectrum to the point where most new applications are using compression and frequency-hopping. Older applications (e.g. regular analog TV broadcast) are getting phased out. It's safe to estimate that in another 30 years, spectrum will be so scarse that no uncompressed broadcast will be allowed. Compression and frequency-hopping remove repetitive patterns in signal and spread it over the available spectrum. Such transmissions look like noise.
So from the point of view of an alien, our future broadcasts will look more and more like noise (due to compression) and less and less like patterned, artificial transmissions. You can say that from 1900 to 2050, Earth will obviously broadcast artificial signal. Before that, zilch. After that, noise undistinguishable from the radio noise of, say, Jupiter.
Now assume you are alien Zorg on planet X at N light-years from Earth. You run a SETI-like program to find intelligent broadcast sent from the vicinity of our star. To have any chance, you have only a very limited time frame: Years 1900+N to 2050+N.
That is a very thin period of time in the history of things. Chinese and Egyptians have a 4000-year old history, and any advance civilization will also have a very long history. Yet, the very nature of radio broadcast gives you a mere 150-year sliver during which a SETI-like program has any chance of success.
If there is any advanced civilization within a few hundred light years, chances are they already went waaay past the spectrum compression stage and that by the time we started SETI, all we could pick is noise-like.
Now, if you can find a mistake in these assumptions, feel free to pinpoint them.
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Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
You'll have to rely on your die hard geeks, because even thirld-world countries ultimately will go digital and spectrum compression. For one good reason: after a while, it will be cheaper. Just as today, a CD player is much cheaper than an analog 33RPM pick-up table, whether it's in Bamako or in Tokyo.
Also, I believe there are no plans to digitize or compress short wave transmissions.
Right now, that's true. But you can bet that this will not stay true for very long. Evety band of the radio spectrum becomes increasingly crowded. Just wait until every gadget on Earth has its own transmitter. The spectrum will be full of spread-spectrum bursts that will make regular analog transmissions absolutely impossible, because all you'll pick will be interferences. The only way to get any signal over the waves will be to have a digital receiver-transmitter.
I've seen and enjoyed Jimmy Neutron. Good animated. But hardly sound science. All it has done is convince me that all aliens want from Earthling is to sacrifice them to their god Poultra. So if I ever see one of these whacos broadcasting a signal that could betray Earth's position, I'll personally hack his transmitter into bits. :-)
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Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/