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SETI@Home Adds New Search Method
Adam Korbitz writes to point out that SETI@Home has added a new algorithm for use in evaluating signals from outer space. It's called "Astropulse," and they've made the scientific details available. Quoting:
"The original SETI@home is narrowband, meaning that it is listening for a particular radio frequency. That's like listening to an orchestra playing, and trying to hear when anyone plays the note "A sharp." Astropulse listens for short-time pulses. In the orchestra analogy, it's like listening for a quick drum beat, or a series of drumbeats. Since no one knows what extraterrestrial communications will 'sound like,' it seems like a good idea to search for several types of signals. In scientific terms, Astropulse is a sky survey that searches for microsecond transient radio pulses."
I find it slightly surprising it has taken the SETI project how many years to start checking broadband as well as narrowband signals. All those years spending a fortune in resources but only checking narrowband seems rather a waste of time. I would have been checking all sorts of broadband signal types from the very beginning.
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Haven't we already covered this? The cost in electricity for them to use my "unused" resources is not worth it for SETI which offers and most likely will never offer any tangible benefit to our society.
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Except for a huge assumption you're making: that an advanced civilization wouldn't want to broadcast a distinctive, easily decoded, narrowband signal. Perhaps they might want to do it to announce their existence to the rest of the universe, even though they would have the know-how to sendmuch more efficient broadband signals.
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SETI is not searching for accidental transmissions or leakage. SETI is only searching for deliberate beacons being sent by alien civilizations. SETI's techniques cannot detect random radio chatter and are not intended to.
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Does anybody else find it ironic that we are looking for intelligent extra-terrestrial communications on the very same frequency that we (an intelligent species) are prohibited from transmitting on? The 1.420 gigahertz frequency was chose (I believe) because of the hydrogen line. It would seem to me that a more effective methodology would be to do a spectrum sweeping search. The odds of any intelligent species transmitting on just one frequency are unlikely enough. Combine that with the fact that we are only listening on one frequency. Now we can compare finding a needle in a haystack as trivial in comparison.
I don't fucking care & refuse to show any respect, or even read anything you've said after it.
This is why we need people to be more rational.
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His point was that people can be good without being religious. And of course people can be nasty and religious at the same time.
...go fuck yourself.
Your posts have done a lot to back up his claim.
Yes, but is there any alien life? Certainly there's been no evidence of any, though you talk as though it certainly, and inevitably, exists. It sure sounds like you are the one making assumptions and promoting a faith based argument!
And as for this changing anyone's beliefs, that's highly debatable. Christian author CS Lewis wrote a trilogy in the late '40s that imagined intelligent life to be on both Mars and Venus. He was a noted apologist and theologian for the Christian faith, and he had no problem with considering the existence of extraterrestrials. (Note: The starting book of the trilogy was called Out of the Silent Planet).
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