500-fold Increase in Data Flow from SETI Telescope

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."

Comments

carbon footprint?

[Doppler00]

I'm just curious how much energy the SETI project has used with zero results thus far. Is the amount of resources and time they are contributing to this cause really worth the incalculable chance they get a signal from an alien civilization? Having millions of PC's running at 100% doing pattern searching seems like a huge waste of energy. I'll run distributed clients myself like folding@home that actually have research results. Usually, only during the winter though (since electric heat is my only option anyway).

Arecibo? I thought they were closing it?

[filbranden]

Arecibo? I thought they were closing it? At least they recently lost around 75% of their fundings.

Re:oh I dunno

[bdjacobson]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

Finding this in the parent's post is left as an exercise for the reader.