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SETI@Home Publishes Skymap
An anonymous reader writes "The skymap of where in the night sky to find the most promising SETI@Home signals is reported today, along with the research plan for the March Stellar Countdown project. The dedicated use of the Arecibo Telescope to revisit these spikes, pulses, and steady signals, focused on 166 star candidates. Those 166 were pruned from the five billion signals that have been found since 1999, depending on the signal's persistence, closeness to a known star, and frequency. The next step is particularly fascinating, if a signal appears to have increased since the first observation put that star on the checklist."
How can they be sure aliens will live close to a star?
When someone might yell at me, it has to be OpenBSD.
But there really isn't anything wrong with trying.
Besides, Seti@home really helped to bring about this idea of 'distributed computing' to the world. And for the science in that end of the project I would be hard pressed to say this project isn't already a success.
But the more I think about it the more I think that radio signals are not the way we are going to find intelligent beings.
For one I question if we are capable of picking up the radio signals we are sending out.
If there was an earth, a duplicate of us, technologicaly, socialy and so forth, say 10 light years away, do we have the ability to pick up it's radio signals?
And for that matter we have had radio for a very short time, just over 100 years. And our use of it is on the way out already. In another 100 years we will probably be producing a fraction of the radio waves we produce now.
Any way you look at it the odds are stacked against Seti@home.
But I still congratulate them on giving us geeks something to talk about.
"Following up on what is an equivalent of a million years of computation..."
When the RIAA talks about the "equivalent number of CD burners", it's a meaningless inflation. Here's another example. It would have served better to mention the number of SETI@Home clients. A true and meaningful figure which would still have conveyed the scale and a sense of awe.
God, how pedantic and picky of me.
You make good points, but I have thought of all that before and am still interested in SETI. I guess its either natural human curiosity, or just too much Star Trek...
The unofficial
First off, even if we never find life out there, the mere existance of SETI@home helped get the idea of massively distributed computing out there as a viable option.
Second, I don't think anyone is claiming that radio waves are a viable method of intersteller communication (frankly, all the options there suck, barring the discovery of handwavium or similar magic-tech).
The point isn't to find a race out there to chat with. The point is to find evidence that, at some point in the past, *someone* out there emitted radio signals. Are they still around? Can we call them up and discuss deep, philosophical questions? Maybe, and probably not. But proving that intelligent life exists or existed off Earth, even if it went extinct long ago by our reckoning, is a worthy enough project, in my less-than-humble opinion.
James.
"I have spread my dreams under your feet, Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams." - W. B. Yeats.
You think nobody would care if we found evidence of intelligent life on another planet?
Also, they could have noticed us a while ago from radio signals, and we're only now getting the signal after they swung the antenna around to point at us.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Well, whether or not the signal was hundreds of thousands of years old or from 15 minutes ago I can hardly imagine it being described as pointless. Evidence of life somewhere other than here, get that through your head. It would be nice to know that something else is going on out there or at the very least has gone on out there.
SETI might not be the first but it's without a doubt the most widely known. That's got to count for something doesn't it? It's advanced awareness of distributed computing far more than any other application so far (unless there's a distributed porn program running around I'm not aware of).
The list of shit people have pulled "back when they first started up" is miles long. I wouldn't have done it (re-fed the clients the same data over and over again) but it pales in comparison to some of the things that people have pulled in order to keep interest alive in their projects while they get things running smoothly.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Er, um, you are aware that "Contact" is a work of fiction, right?
More seriously your post seems ill thought out. Yes, the odds of finding anyting are rather slim, especially considering that our only sensors are inside the sun's area of interference. However you seem to be underestimating the importance of finding evidence of non-human sentience. Carrying on a conversation is nice, don't misunderstand me, but I'd be happy just knowing for sure that we aren't the only ones out here. Sure, the odds are that there's other people in the universe, but I'd like to know for sure.
The cost is quite low, really, and its spin off effects are already prooving to be of benefit in the short run. The truth is that "pointless" research has paid off time and again. Maybe SETI won't pay off, but the fact is that it might.
Oddly enough, you didn't mention the single biggest problem facing the SETI program: the likelyhood that use of omnidirectional radio is not long lived. Here on Earth we're already tending to move away from powerful omnidirectional signals. Increasing use of laser, microwave, fiberoptic, etc is slowly killing off true broadcast radio. Some people suspect that within another thrity years or so the only omnidirecitonal broadcasts will be quite weak and short ranged (equivalant to cordless phones).
Still, even given that, I'd say that the potential benefit of SETI vastly outweighs its miniscule cost. You've got to take chances sometimes...
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
"Oh, and interesting to note that when SETI@home first started up, they ran out of data to process. So you know what they did? They just fed the same data back to clients, over and over and over again, without telling people- acting like they still had new data to process."
Hello? SETI@home is a scientific endeavour. Accuracy of results matters, and as long as hacking the client to produce false results is possible(always will be), rechecking work units for authenticity by sending them out to more than one client is necessary, duh.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
You're mostly right, but you're completley wrong. The fact of the matter is, SETI probably won't find anything like you say, and it will take too long to talk to anyone we do find, but SETI isn't hurting anybody, and it might help. End of story man. I don't see you doing anything to answer the mysteries of the universe.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
You presume that any civilisation we find is on the same technological level as we are.
There is the possibility (probability perhaps) that a found civilisation is far in advance such that it might take 100 years for our message to rech them but when it does they engage thier ftl communication system and promptly tell us how to build our own if we don't have one by then already.
I'd agree with you that the chance of SETI being successful is probably slim, but it's not pointless, because there is *a* chance, and that's worth exploring.
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I'm pretty damn sure they could be getting a many thousand times speedup.
The process is to take a FFT of the log magnitude spectrum, and look for peaks in the cepstral domain instead of periodicities and triplets in the spectral domain. Maybe there is some reason you can't look for gausians that way. Maybe I ought to take this to email and see what the SETI@Home people say.
The point is first to get the proof. If we have proof that there's anyone out there and we know where they are (or did) transmit from then we can start looking for more information and in different formats.
There are a lot of "pointless" projects out there, cold fusion, AI, room temperature superconduction, teleportation, time travel, an end to world hunger, "peace keeping", Battlestar Galactica as visioned by Richard Hatch. Luckily there are still dreamers out there wasting their time and money trying the impossible. Who know's maybe they'll succeed.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
I think you make excellent points, but the other side also has some good points to make too. Me? I'm just glad someone is doing something. Its hardly resource intensive (theyre not tying up aricebo for months and people leave their PCs on anyway) and in many ways it can be seen as baby steps towards *some* understanding of potential alien contact.
>They don't get much radio time, and they can't cover much of the sky.
Granted, but that could change tomorrow with funding.
>Now chances of actually recognizing the signal as intelligent life are unknown
I wouldn't say that. Primes in binary would be pretty obvious. Even a something trivial that isn't a pulsar but repeats could be seen as meaningful communication i.e. someone is saying "I exist!"
>Ok, maybe you see it and you recognize it. Can you decode it?
Even if they cant or if its just numbers, the proof that life exists off our sphere is revolutionary and will change humanity forever. That's something to take seriously even if we don't know what we're being told.
> Great, someone's actually listening and gets the signal. You've just had the century-long equivalent of the 20 second bar conversation
I don't think the consensus at SETI or SETI-like projects is to build a conversation. Its about discovery. The proof that intelligent life is abound in the universe, like I mentioned above, is more than justification for the projects.
I think people with your kinds of criticisms have a very high expectation of a very limited project. That doesn't mean that the project isn't worthwhile or can't deliver goods. It just wont deliver the goods you seem to want - a "telephone" like conversation with aliens. A verified signal is more than enough to bowl the world over. Who knows how it will affect us. Will space exploration get a second boom? Will people take global disarmament more seriously? Will the religious scream bloody murder?
Who knows. Like I wrote above, its not an expensive project and I hope to see more SETI stuff in the future, especially powerful wholesale transmissions to likely candidates.
er, if the signal has increased in a year that would tend to show growth. Say when we were listening to them a year ago the only people with cell phones on their planet were rich doctors. A year later the price of alien cell phones has gone down. now more aliens have cell phones. Hence an increase in traffic across the airwaves.
And an opportunity for T-Mobile to make a killing.
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* Chance of physically intercepting the signal is next to nothing. They don't get much radio time, and they can't cover much of the sky.
Agreed... but it doesn't hurt to try. Also, don't forget that to develop advanced techniques or better alternatives, one needs to start with the basics. You don't start riding a bicycle without learning how to balance or how to walk. Same thing here. What they are doing may be "primitive" and next to useless but I'm sure some good will come out of it--if not now, in 50 or 100 years ago.
* Now chances of actually recognizing the signal as intelligent life are unknown. They've got some great theories. Who knows if they're right?
Intelligence is an overrated word that is used to oppress lower classes. There is no such thing as intelligene--at least when you look at things from a macroscopic scale. The point wouldn't be to find intelligent lifeform--rather it is to find ANY lifeform. Whatever you find may or may not be "intelligent" (for example, if you find aliens that have mastered electromagnetic waves but haven't even figured out how to build a 10 story building, are they "intelligent"?).
* Ok, maybe you see it and you recognize it. Can you decode it?
This will be the tough part IMO. Even if you find something, it could take hundreads of years to decode the message. Stanislaw Lem, a Polish sci-fi author who has written many sci-fi novesl (including Solaris), postulates that it will take 100+ years to communicate with an alien (even if the alien made physical contact). Humans can understand each other's language because we made it all up; and we can understand animals because we are animals. The same cannot be said of foreign aliens.
* Alright, so who cares if you decode it, you FOUND INTELLIGENT LIFE that existed at least several hundred of years ago
I can't believe you are dismissing this. If contact is made (or evidence is found), it will be the MOST IMPORTANT human event in the last 500 years. It will be bigger than theory of gravity, theory of relativity, development of transistors,computers,electricity, World War II, rise of Communism, Nazism, etc. Discovery of aliens will likely result in elimination of religions (or religious wars), massive scientific "push", etc. It will alter our understanding of the universe. We will know that we are not "alone". In addition, this can provide more answers to the meaning to life and further philosophy...
* Ok, so you send a reply. You figure out where that source planet will be when the signal finally reaches it. * "The aliens get it" requires the same hurdles. Mainly, they have a SETI program, they've got their ears pointed in the right direction, they identify the reply as intelligent life, etc. Hell, it assumes they haven't nuked themselves into extinction like we're on the steady path towards.
They may or may not have technology dealing with electromagnetic/radio waves. But the hope is that they will. For all we know, they may be far more advanced in that area... As far as aliens nuking themselves, it is a possibility. However, I don't think it will be the case. Humans are very violent (we kill each other, destroy nature, etc). I think the probability of finding more peaceful beings are higher than finding ones that are more violent than us.
* Now, lets say they decide to reply(ie, they're not xenophobic, they don't think it's pointless, etc). It takes another couple hundred years to get back to earth, assuming they aim right etc.
This argument is moot. There will be a massive lag so people can't communicate. However, we (and them) can sort of figure out that something is out there. Also one should keep in mind that this will be a long term action, done to benefit humanity as opposed to the individual. For instance, if you send a signal now, someone 200 years from now may get back the response from the alien. It does not benefit you
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What a waste of all those CPU cycles!
Ahh the very nature of Seti@home.
After I quit using it my power bill went down over 20$ a month and I'm not kidding in the slightest.
Before that it struck me - what's the actual probability of finding intelligent life? I work in tech support 90% of all the people I talk to each day are complete morons.
As we are quickly discovering, RF isn't the ideal way to shuffle information around. As a result, Earth will soon (within decades) abandon RF in favor of pure optical communications. Assuming most intelligence follows a similar path, we can expect they will emit detectable RF for perhaps a century. On a geologic timescale, this is much less than the blink of an eye. Therefore the odds of us catching another intelligence when it is at the RF stage of tech evolution is vanishingly small. So fugeddaboudit.
It brought distributed computing to the forefront of media attention and to many user's desktops. For that, I give it credit.
Now I'm no physicist, and I don't know how potential energy is measured relative to a pair of celestial objects, but assuming the velocity of the spaceship relative to the target planet started at something FAR less than .3c, wouldn't that mean that the spaceship somehow had to acquire most of that 15 million megatons of energy itself? Where would that come from? From it's fuel, or fuel it gathered along the way (magentic fusion ramjet equivalent or something)?
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