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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."
Protein Folding should take precedence over pointless searches for noise-in-patterns.
Six hours nineteen minutes right ascension, fourteen degrees twenty-two minutes declination ... no sighting. ... no sighting. ... no sighting.
Six hours nineteen minutes right ascension, fourteen degrees twenty-three minutes declination
Six hours nineteen minutes right ascension, fourteen degrees twenty-three minutes declination
etc. ad infinitum
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).
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.
Arecibo? I thought they were closing it? At least they recently lost around 75% of their fundings.
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.
The difference between idle and full load power use on processors nowadays is on the order of 20W (though admittedly this is more like 60W on processors like the Core 2 Duo if you have SpeedStep enabled). 50 hours at full load before you've used a kilowatt more energy. Given an average energy price of $0.13 per KWh that's a pretty small amount, on the order of $2 per month. It's still something, but to me the work done for SETI or Folding@Home is at least worth the price of a cappucino every month.
Processors are also built to run at full load, as long as it holds a good steady temperature (say 50C) you might see its lifespan decreased from 30,000 hours to 20,000 hours. What they're not built for is constant temperature cycling between load and room (off) temperature. Turning your PC off at night will likely have the same affect on its lifespan as constant load does. Again, to me at least, it's worth it. I replace the CPU every 2-3 years anyway and have yet to see one KIA.
I do think, though, that Folding@Home is a better investment than SETI. Not that I'm not curious about finding life out there, but there are more important things to do here first.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Did I say that people's spare CPU cycles should be mandated to SETI? As if that were feasible or even possible?
When I say that Protein Folding *should* take precedence over SETI, I'm simply making an appeal to people's personal priorities--and mine favor understanding and curing diseases over inconclusive alien signal-hunting every day of the week.
Yes, you're free to choose for yourself what cause you want to help out. As you should be. And I'm free to try to persuade others to help a very worthwhile cause:
http://folding.stanford.edu/