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500-fold Increase in Data Flow from SETI Telescope

Posted by Soulskill on from the et-in-crystal-clear-high-defintion dept.

coondoggie brings us an article from Networkworld about a flood of new data for the SETI@home project. We discussed something similar a few months ago when a new telescope array went live. The vast amount of processing power required to handle the new data is prompting the SETI@home team to make a plea for more volunteers. Quoting the press release: "What triggered the new flow of data was the addition of seven new receivers at Arecibo, which now let the telescope record radio signals from seven regions of the sky simultaneously instead of just one. With greater sensitivity and the ability to detect the polarization of the radio signals, plus 40 times more frequency coverage, Arecibo is set to survey the sky for new radio sources."

4 of 346 comments (clear)

  1. FoldingAtHome by perspectival · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Protein Folding should take precedence over pointless searches for noise-in-patterns.

    1. Re:FoldingAtHome by jafiwam · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Protein folding is important, however discovery of ETI ranks up somewhere along with; fire, wheel, tools, calculus.

      Find a protein, you change many lives for the better.

      Find ET, and you change the course of the human race forever.

      I will choose what to do with my extra CPU cycles myself, thank you very much. To me, ET is more interesting.

      (Yes, I should know, it was my computer that discovered the candidate object for SETI@home back in 2004. Got on TV and weekly reader for that. What have YOU done with your spare CPU cycles?)

      My only regret is BOINIC runs so crappy and is so hard to manage (come on, install a program that crashes upon resume, gotta dig out the right profile, gotta figure out how to sign up for projects = fail).

  2. Parent is wrong by NotQuiteReal · · Score: 5, Insightful
    People should have a free choice about the causes they donate to. If you made everyone pick Protein Folding, it would be akin to just another tax.

    Just because you think you know what people should do, doesn't mean you do.

    --
    This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
  3. oh I dunno by Quadraginta · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's a logic error here, I think. By this logic, we should do nothing except the very highest priority thing in our life, and society should pour all of its resources into the very most important priority. For example, we should all live in a thatched hut, eat weeds and grubs, wear the untanned raw skins of animals (or just go naked), and slave 18 hours a day so all our labor and energy can go into....whatever the single highest social priority is...curing cancer, fighting war 'n' injustice, whatever.

    Which is silly. The goal of life is maximize overall satisfaction, not accomplish one single highest goal. It's important to rank your priorities, of course, both as an individual and as a society. But the notion that because A is "more important" than B implies ipso facto that A should get all the resources and B should get none is maximally silly.

    Indeed, it's kind of OCD obsessive to always be focussed on pursuing the Top Goal, the kind of thing that when we see people doing it in practise -- giving up everything, including enough sleep and good nutrition, to, say, play World of Warcraft and become the biggest baddest player -- we conclude they need to do some growing up.