SETI@home Turns Five Today

mfh writes "Five years ago today, SETI@home launched a comprehensive program to search for Extra Terrestrial life in the universe, using millions of home computers to help compile useful data that could some day lead to the discovery of advanced extra terrestrial life. Since inception, SETI@home has found 2,568 persistent Gaussians, possible radio transmissions from a distant planet. SETI began in 1960 with the efforts of Cornell University astronomer Frank Drake, whose Project Ozma became the first modern SETI experiment in history."

Comments

Re:Defect

[Martin Blank]

It's called BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing), and it's still in beta, but progressing. I have it on one of my systems, but it's only working on one project right now. Aside from the occasional software update, I've not touched it in a month or two, so I'm not sure if they've implemented any more projects.

5 years ...

[ciupman]

... and 0 aliens ;)

Re:i hate to say it...

[Warpedcow]

wouldnt it be better to donate cycles to something like folding@home, parkinsons and alzheimers disease protein research?

I can't because, only Seti has a client for my computers running OS/2. I'd like to move, but I won't until those other projects support my OS of choice.

Re:Possible radio transmission?

[Kainaw]

Does anyone know anything more about "possible radio transmissions from a distant planet"? TIA

I didn't find a real answer to this in a quick scan of the replies, so I figure I'll give it a shot...

I assume you know that SETI@home is parsing a vast collection of radio transmissions and hoping to find one from off-planet. When you download it and run it, you get a batch of transmissions and your computer will try to find a specific pattern in the mess. It is looking a single signal that initially has a steep decline in frequency. Then it levels out at one frequency. Then it goes into another steep decline. Why?

If a signal is broadcast from Earth, it stays at about the same frequency all the time. If it is brodcast from, say, Uranus, the spin of the Earth will cause a doppler effect. Start with your antenna being on the 'dark side' of the Earth. That is the side opposite the transmission. As it spins around and starts to pick up the transmission, it will be travelling very fast into the signal - causing the frequency to be increased. The relative speed going into the frequency will decrease as the Earth continues to spin. When you start heading back to the dark side, you will move away from the signal, causing the frequency to drop.

So, all SETI@home is really doing is looking for a doppler effect that matches the speed of the spin of the Earth. Such signals have been found. When they are found, the SETI people hunt down the source. Sometimes it is domestic (a weird situation where a signal bounces just right off a mountain or two). Sometimes it is one of our distant space explorers. Sometimes it is a star. So far, none have been from possible intelligent life - especially those domestic ones.