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SETI Institute Is Looking For a Few Good Algorithms

Posted by Soulskill on from the pulling-a-netflix dept.

blackbearnh writes "For years, people have been using SETI@Home to help search for signs of extraterrestrial life in radio telescope data. But Jill Tarter, director of the Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute, wants to take things to the next level. Whereas SETI@Home basically used people's computers as part of a giant distributed network to run a fixed set of filters written by SETI researchers, Tarter thinks someone out there may have even better search algorithms that could be applied. She's teamed with a startup called Cloudant to make large volumes of raw data from the new Allen telescope available, and free Amazon EC2 processing time to crunch the data. According to Tarter: 'SETI@Home came on the scene a decade ago, and it was brilliant and revolutionary. It put distributed computing on the map with such a sexy application. But in the end, it's been service computing. You could execute the SETI searches that were made available to you, but you couldn't make them any better or change them. We'd like to take the next step and invite all of the smart people in the world who don't work for Berkeley or for the SETI Institute to use the new Allen Telescope. To look for signals that nobody's been able to look for before because we haven't had our own telescope; because we haven't had the computing power.'"

9 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. If (signal eq '6EQUJ5') by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    print "WOW!"

  2. According to Claude Shannon... by arc86 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from noise. I remembered hearing this in school so I searched and found this paper.

    As I understand SETI has always been searching for narrowband signals in the past. But our technology is moving toward spread spectrum signals for more efficient use of bandwidth, making our transmissions appear more like noise to anyone who doesn't know the encoding scheme. Aliens could be doing/have done the same. So good luck, scientists!

    1. Re:According to Claude Shannon... by DriedClexler · · Score: 4, Informative

      Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from noise. I remembered hearing this in school ...

      Well, to be more precise, it follows as an implication of:

      1) Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (Clarke's 3rd Law.)
      2) Maximally compressed data is indistinguishable from noise. (Theorem in information theory.)

      A sufficiently advanced civilization will ("magically") hit the theoretical compression maximum, and that will look like random noise. (Anyone's head hurting yet?)

      --
      Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
    2. Re:According to Claude Shannon... by ascari · · Score: 4, Funny

      Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from noise.

      So those noise making things that we heard at the World Cup actually were a sign of intelligence?????

    3. Re:According to Claude Shannon... by should_be_linear · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I guess we will also in 100 years or so realize that we emit nothing but noise, and short distance one for that matter (Wi-Fi, some future gen). So, if we want to be visible to potential neighbors, we must establish "pulsing station", which emits something intelligent and easily detectable, like prime numbers. But it is unlikely it will be old fashioned radio signal. It is probably hard to detect from such distances because it is destroyed by objects on its way (stars, galaxies, small objects, gas, whatever). Maybe neutrinos, such pulse could pass trough everything on its way, and maybe there is way to pickup that broadcast somehow on the other side (if there is, they will know how). So, maybe it is just to early for this sort of projects, there is homework on inter-galactic broadcast to do, and one that actually make sense, not analog TV.

      --
      839*929
  3. How hard could it be... by thestudio_bob · · Score: 4, Funny

    if data contains alien_signal then
    alert("Found Alien!!! Prepare for destruction!!!)
    end if

    --
    The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains /.
    1. Re:How hard could it be... by selven · · Score: 4, Funny

      if data contains alien_signal then
      alert("Found Alien!!! Prepare for destruction!!!)
      end if

      >>> SyntaxError: EOL while scanning string literal

      See, it's much harder to implement than it looks.

  4. Using radio seems a silly method by gestalt_n_pepper · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Some civilizations will, for a short period of time, use detectable radio as a means of communication, but I suspect that there are very few of these at the same point in their technological development as we are. It would make more sense to look for objects that are almost certainly artifacts. Geometrically placed stars moving in the same direction at the same speed. The infrared signature of Dyson spheres. Anything that's too geometrically perfect to be natural. Anything that's accelerating//decelerating relative to it's surroundings. In our own solar system, what would an asteroid mine tailing look like, and does anything look like that?

    --
    Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
  5. I truly wish them success by BigBadBus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But those of us who were around when the programme kicked off in 1999 got a bit peeved when it was found that we were processing the same workunits over and over again, and then there was the "problem" when it was announced that the clients weren't optimised for the scanning algorithms. A lot of people packed their bags and left the SETI@home project. Myself? I got a little annoyed when it was announced that new ideas for searching through the data were announced...and we'd have to start all over again. Lets hope that whatever is organised next time is a bit better, well, organised :-)

    --
    My web domain.