Crypto-currency Craze 'Hinders Search For Alien Life' (bbc.com)

Scientists listening out for broadcasts by extra-terrestrials are struggling to get the computer hardware they need, thanks to the crypto-currency mining craze, a radio-astronomer has said. From a report: Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) researchers want to expand operations at two observatories. However, they have found that key computer chips are in short supply. "We'd like to use the latest GPUs [graphics processing units]... and we can't get 'em," said Dan Werthimer. Demand for GPUs has soared recently thanks to crypto-currency mining. "That's limiting our search for extra-terrestrials, to try to answer the question, 'Are we alone? Is there anybody out there?'," Dr Werthimer told the BBC. "This is a new problem, it's only happened on orders we've been trying to make in the last couple of months."

Comments

Protecting alien's privacy

[WoodstockJeff]

Aliens have a right to not be monitored, too.

Re:Protecting alien's privacy

[Hetero]

The field of astrophysics utilizes orders of magnitude in their calculations with ONE significant figure. Numbers like 1E-50 are commonplace. Now think about that one for your probability of catching an alien's signal on the hydrogen line spectrum. Think about it. You'd have to modulate a star. Not going to happen, and I don't think they would be that interested in our level of "intelligence," unfortunately.

Re:Protecting alien's privacy

[The Grim Reefer]

I don't think they would be that interested in our level of "intelligence," unfortunately.

Sure they would. We'll make great Pets

Re:Protecting alien's privacy

[Excelcia]

They are not looking for modulating of a star. No one is thinking an alien race is going to be modulating a star. Stars don't emit on the hydrogen line. Lord.

When looking for a frequency to search for transmissions on, you can't use nice round numbers and expect that those nice round numbers for us are going to be nice round numbers for them too. 1.000000GHz for us won't be 1.000000GWhatevers for them because every race will have a different measurement for time. So they look for frequencies that are built into the fabric of the universe and use those as the base reference, with the belief that if that idea makes sense for us it would make sense for others too. Hydrogen is the most basic element, the most abundant element in space, and the precession frequency of neutral hydrogen atoms (1.42ishGHz) is a radio frequency that propagates reasonably well. The hope is if that idea makes sense to us, it will make sense to an alien race who might be looking for a frequency to send on that others will think to listen to. Hydrogen line times pi is another one.

Re:Protecting alien's privacy

[Wycliffe]

Hydrogen is the most basic element, the most abundant element in space, and the precession frequency of neutral hydrogen atoms (1.42ishGHz) is a radio frequency that propagates reasonably well. The hope is if that idea makes sense to us, it will make sense to an alien race who might be looking for a frequency to send on that others will think to listen to. Hydrogen line times pi is another one.

But we aren't actually sending out that frequency either. What if everyone is listening and no one is transmitting?

Re:Protecting alien's privacy

[gnick]

But we aren't actually sending out that frequency either. What if everyone is listening and no one is transmitting?

We've got a new satellite blaring David Bowie into the void. Does that count?

Re:Protecting alien's privacy

[drinkypoo]

But we aren't actually sending out that frequency either. What if everyone is listening and no one is transmitting?

We don't have anything useful to say. "We are here and we are primitive" is actually a dumb message to transmit into the cosmos. The only useful information to transmit to other species would be if you had the secret to FTL communication and/or travel. Otherwise, you can't hope to have any meaningful exchange, and you might as well focus on your home and not worry about whether there are aliens. If there are, you can't reach them or talk to them. If they can reach you, then there's nothing you can really do to get ready if they have malicious intentions, so why worry?

Re:Protecting alien's privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

And then the expansion of the universe, galaxy's in motion, redshift.

Re:Protecting alien's privacy

[Headw1nd]

I remember reading a sci fi story where the aliens were doing just that, holding a star in a weird excited state. After tens of thousands of years, maybe more, of doing that without getting any response, they gave up. Humanity just assumed it was the result of natural phenomena. Meanwhile, birds on earth had evolved to use the output of the star in their navigation sense, and many were confused and lost when it ended.

Re:Protecting alien's privacy

[jellomizer]

The concept of Seti while interesting is flawed.
Just look at own civilization.
When Seti was started we were broadcasting long radio waves for everything.
Now we are going toward the direction of closed infrastructure, Fiber optics, cable, Shorter range Wi-Fi and Cell radio services.
So in a period of 100 years we went to screaming radio, to a talk.

Now for life on other planets will be in different stages of technology. I expect while most planets will just be slime puddles. But places with intelligent life will be more back loaded towards us about 500 years ago or more. Then others who have figured out this science thing, to discover properties that are outside our normal senses. will be probably ahead of us. So finding a civilization within 100 years of our level is extremely slim. Thus most likely undetectable.

But with bitcoins, I can get a cool car.

Re:Protecting alien's privacy

[mspohr]

Or perhaps, this:
Alien Wall From X-Files Season 11 Episode 4
https://youtu.be/T3AiWL-UHuY

Re:Protecting alien's privacy

[gnick]

"We are here and we are primitive" is actually a dumb message to transmit into the cosmos.

So what? Can you imagine how ground shaking it would be if we received that message? "We are here and we are primitive" can be translated to "You are not alone."

Re:Protecting alien's privacy

[PPH]

What if everyone is listening

No. Because talking meat.

Re:Protecting alien's privacy

[SuricouRaven]

I know exactly what message I'd send. It'd be in unary encoding: 2 3 5 7 11 13.

It's the message that many on this planet want to receive: "You are not alone."

Re:Protecting alien's privacy

[Zorpheus]

It is also an especially quiet band in space with low noise, because water molecules in interstelar gas absorb these.
Makes me wonder though if someone would really use this for communication. If it is absorbed it weakens the signal sent. The absorption only helps if the sender, receiver and the way in between are not absorbing.

SETICoin

[decipher_saint]

Can only be traded for Flanian Pobble Beads (but at a very good exchange)

Re:SETICoin

[olsmeister]

I'd rather trade in gold pressed latinum, since it can actually be exchanged for a different currency.

Gridcoin

[DigiShaman]

https://www.gridcoin.us/

Worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

It's disgusting that all that important computing power goes to something so utterly pointless. They should stop this nonsense and just let the cryptocurrency miners have the GPUs.

Re:Worthless

[PolygamousRanchKid]

IThey should stop this nonsense and just let the cryptocurrency miners have the GPUs.

The SETI folks can get all the graphics cards they need from the Aliens. All they need to do is to broadcast messages into outer space:

"We need graphics cards! Please send us graphics cards!"

However, maybe the Aliens don't want to be found by us, and they won't send shit.

Re:Worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the aliens' crypto mining operations are using all of their GPUs as well.

Re:Worthless

[bigdavex]

SETI: "We need graphics cards! Please send us graphics cards!"

Aliens: "Sure, pay us 100,000 bit coins"

Re:This is too easy

[arth1]

This is not SETI@Home, but SETI proper, where they need graphics cards to quickly analyze data, not wait for weeks or months. SETI@Home is high bandwidth, but terrible latency.

Proof of space

[Idou]

More reason to switch to Proof of space. Then SETI will be able to buy a bunch of used GPUs on the cheap. . .

Re:Proof of space

[goombah99]

but then SETI will say they can't afford to buy RAM chips.

Or they could wait and mine stored data later

[goombah99]

THere's no rush to mine seti data. it doesn't matter if we detect alien signals now or in 20 years. so just store it and then mine it all in a single day with quantum processors in 20 years.

SetiCoins are also a good idea. But How to make this practical? the characteristic needed is a calculation that is hard to do but easy to check like factoring or hashing. You can't make detection of a signal be the mining event because that's never going to happen. You can't just make it some bolus of processing in which two parties agree as they might collude. So what about the seti signal is hard to do but easy to check?

Say it ain't so

[madwheel]

Oh cool another post about why crypto and mining is bad. Nvidia has already stated they are ramping up production for this year, as is AMD.

Re:Say it ain't so

[Z00L00K]

And suddenly there's a surplus of cards instead because it's no longer viable to mine cryptocurrencies.

Re:Say it ain't so

[drinkypoo]

And suddenly there's a surplus of cards instead because it's no longer viable to mine cryptocurrencies.

That would be great, but as long as people make cryptocurrencies with GPU mining in mind, that's probably not going to happen.

Re:Say it ain't so

[scatbomb]

Yes, we've heard so many reasons why crypto is not viable. Too much energy use, too slow, not accepted anywhere, too volatile... and now apparently it prevents us from finding aliens. Wow. I think crypto must be an actual threat to the elite. The shills are out in force 24/7 spreading whatever FUD they can. Meanwhile, BTC is up nearing $10k again...

Re:Say it ain't so

[MrL0G1C]

Wow. I think crypto must be an actual threat to the elite.

Who do you think has pushed the price up so high? Who is now selling futures for cryptocoins? And the big banks even have their own crypto-currency.

Who is playing who here?

Re:Say it ain't so

[scatbomb]

Wow. I think crypto must be an actual threat to the elite.

Who do you think has pushed the price up so high? Who is now selling futures for cryptocoins? And the big banks even have their own crypto-currency.

Who is playing who here?

1. People who got the FOMO last December.

2. *selling* Think about that.

3. *their own* Think about that.

4. The value of my cryptos are up 30% this week and once again at all-time-high. So...

Just wait a bit...

[gatfirls]

...There will be a glut of them soon enough.

Re:Just wait a bit...

[Whorhay]

I'm really looking forward to the coming glut. I've started buying the components I want for a new computer as they go on sale. I figure I'll be buying the video card last and hopefully super cheap. Maybe I'll even be able to justify getting a 1080.

Let them eat AMD

[goombah99]

If they can't afford to buy an Nvidia then just switch to openCL on AMD.

Alien Porn

[goombah99]

statistically speaking, the most likely thing we will detect on an alien broadcast will be the Porn Channel. Eeewww.

Re:Alien Porn

[tonique]

Interstellar Porn is the best kind of IP.

The solution to fermi paradox

[goombah99]

Fermi's paradox is that if alien life were inevitable we should see the signls. We wont if the fate of all alien civilizations is to eventually kill themselves quickly so that few would likley broadcast in our brief tenure.

An alternative explanation is that all civilization eventually discover crytocurrency and it consumes all their resources including the broadcasting power. All civilizations go dark after a period of time.

Re:The solution to fermi paradox

[jd]

Other alternatives:

1. Some alien civilizations found wireless to be slow and inefficient, and have adopted dense mode optic fibres, waveguides and other physical networking for most of their stuff. The same route we're taking. You only need enough for the density of radio transmitters in the galaxy to be very low. We can still detect them, using the method proposed by James Lovelock when he was at NASA - observe the atmosphere instead and look for combinations that can't arise naturally.

2. Alien civilizations have an abundance of less than one technological race in every 25 light-years (which is the current extreme range we can detect them). We won't be able to go past even the 100 light-year range until 2024, when SKA comes online. In other words, we've wildly overestimated our abilities.

3. We're pointing telescopes at systems without habitable planets. Now that we actually have the beginnings of a list of exoplanets, let's look and see how many of those which are viable we've actually looked at. Probably very few.

4. Sir Fred Hoyle was right, life rarely evolves on planets, it evolves in deep space. In that case, we're looking in the wrong places. The galaxy could be buzzing with life and we're ignoring it.

5. Encrypted messages are indistinguishable from a random oracle. They're all using Intergalactic IPSec because PRIVACY MATTERS to any evolved species.

Re:The solution to fermi paradox

[Tenebrousedge]

We all need to listen to Frank Drake (founder of SETI) on this one. We are not ever going to detect any alien communications (unless they are specifically targeted at us with that intent). We have a hard enough time talking to Mars: that whole 'Sun' thing makes for a terrible SNR. Not only that, but broadcasting high-energy analog signals is extremely wasteful. Humanity had about a 50-year period where we did this. Now, as you say, we use waveguides. We also don't send anything in analog form any more. Digital data that you don't know how to decode tends to look an awful lot like noise, even without being encrypted or compressed.

What SETI is doing is completely pointless, even compared to cryptocurrency mining.

Re:The solution to fermi paradox

[angelashirley]

We all need to listen to Frank Drake (founder of SETI) on this one. We are not ever going to detect any alien communications (unless they are specifically targeted at us with that intent). We have a hard enough time talking to Mars: that whole 'Sun' thing makes for a terrible SNR. Not only that, but broadcasting high-energy analog signals is extremely wasteful. Humanity had about a 50-year period where we did this. Now, as you say, we use waveguides. We also don't send anything in analog form any more. Digital data that you don't know how to decode tends to look an awful lot like noise, even without being encrypted or compressed.

What SETI is doing is completely pointless, even compared to cryptocurrency mining.

Nice ....!

Re:Or they could wait and mine stored data later

[Wycliffe]

THere's no rush to mine seti data. it doesn't matter if we detect alien signals now or in 20 years. so just store it and then mine it all in a single day with quantum processors in 20 years.

Or just wait for the cryptocurrency market to either collapse, get more efficient, or move over to ASIC and all those cheap no longer needed GPUs flood the market.

Re:Or they could wait and mine stored data later

[Charcharodon]

It already exists. It is called gridcoin. The POW for Gridcoin feeds the BOINC system which just happens to have the SETI@home project on it along with many other astronomy and science projects.

Other computing projects too.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how much Folding@Home is affected and other more useful computer projects.

Re:This is too easy

[MikeDataLink]

Then perhaps they should go petition GPU manufacturers for priority with processing their business-grade project-level PO order of multiple GPUs, instead of sounding like a bunch of whiny bitches broadcasting their problems out into the ether in hopes that someone out there will be listening hard enough to give a shit.

Exactly. This is stupid. I guarantee you all it would take is a phone call from NASA directors and GPUs would be in transit in no time. This is just lazy and lack of communication.

Conspiracy! :P

[Koreantoast]

How do we know SETI doesn't want the GPUs to mine cryptocurrency themselves to fund their program? :P

Re:We deserve it :-(

[Charcharodon]

Not very smart are you. Here let me give you a couple of car examples.

Horses vs car. Cars are way to expensive what a waste of time.

50 years later Cars vs race cars. Race cars are way to expensive, what a waste of time

50 years after that gas powered cars that are faster/better handling than historical race cars vs Teslas (electric cars). Telsas are way to expensive, what a waste of time

50 years after that Teslas vs flying cars.......

To go back to GPUs.

In the short run yeah there aren't too many GPUs to be had because the crypto miners have snatched all them up, and tripled there prices, and want as many more as they can get their hands on. This has resulted in the manufactures pouring buckets of money into more manufacturing capacity and GPU research for faster cards.

Nothing good could ever come from that, believe you me.

Hit up BOINC.

[Charcharodon]

Sound like they need to get their projects on BOINC if they are complaining that they don't have enough GPUs to get things done.

You don't even have to run on their public service. Those guys will set up a local grid computing network for you on all the machines on campus. More than enough CPU power laying around I'm sure.

They'll still be there

[grasshoppa]

They aren't going anywhere, so what's the rush?

aliens?

[thebullshitpatrol]

it's also hindering my search for BLEEDING EDGE GRAPHIX (!!)

Seti Crypto-Currency

[RumGunner]

Dear SETI,

Make your own crypto-currency, and use the extra cycles to run all the calculations you'll ever need.

Love,
Obvious Solution

Re:This is too easy

[Highdude702]

Still upset you missed out on the train eh?

Wait, whats a GPU?

[LesFerg]

It's 2018 and /. [Slashdot] readers [people who read Slashdot] need to have the acronym GPU explained to them in their story summary.
What have we come to?

Re:Wait, whats a GPU?

[wbr1]

Well if SETI needs them, GPU must actually mean gray-skin processing unit.

Re:We deserve it :-(

[GameboyRMH]

The flourishing of criminal finance and mass energy waste? Those are the only flourishings cryptocurrency has produced.

And biology!

[ragahast]

We can't get GPUs for biology, either. Molecular dynamics simulations, protein structure determination using cryo-EM, and a number of other areas in computational biology rely on GPU-accelerated computing for obtaining results in a timely fashion.

GPU computing in this area has the particular advantage over CPU clusters in rapid iteration over user-defined parameters. If you know a correct set of parameters, running a job for several days on CPU is fine. If you need to run 100 such jobs to find those parameters, it's totally inadequate.

It's very frustrating that the cost of a 4-GPU workstation has gone from ~$6,000 to ~$12,000 in the past year. It especially hinders smaller labs and institutions. Ethereum can't crash soon enough (bitcoin is mined on ASICS, Ethereum is the real driver of GPU price now).

they're all around us, dude

[elcor]

just clean up the gunk that's polluting your mind, meditate a little or something

Re:This is too easy

[ASDFnz]

Still upset you missed out on the train eh?

Some of us do not care that we missed out on Ponzi schemes which no amount of sophisticated programming to create buzzwords such as decentralized and blockchains can hide it from being.

Ta

So really really upset then?

Gridcoin - cryptocurrency with a purpose

[schweini]

May I point out that there's a cryptocurrency that doesn't waste all that precious computing power that is currently simply used as a glorified heater?

https://www.gridcoin.us/

It runs on top of the BOINC platform, so you can choose different proyects you want to contribute to

Re:This is too easy

[dargaud]

Reading about bitcoin I think it would be great if we could combine the computation requirements of bitcoins with the computational needs of BOINC/Seti@home. Build a bitcoin variant that does actual useful computation, instead of wasting it on SHA256 iterations. Mine bitcoin and search for aliens or fight cancer at the same time...

Re:This is too easy

[arth1]

Mine bitcoin and search for aliens or fight cancer at the same time...

Why?

If we found radio signals that likely were caused by extrasolar life, what then? New religions and prophets claiming to talk to the aliens, and jingoists calling for arming ourselves to the teeth, not understanding nor wanting to understand the distances involved?

And a cure for cancer? It's a good sentiment, but we may have difficulties affording that. Imagine the resulting population explosion, and having to take care of people who will still pick up non-terminal ailments. There will just be more elderly people who will pick up these ailments. If we were to expect 30 years in a nursing home versus 5, what would that do to society? Fewer people dying is not necessarily a good thing for society, just for individuals.
If anything, I think we need more culling, not more cuddling. We're not meant to live forever. Evolution cannot reward the successful if there are no unsuccessful. And unless we go away and leave the world to the new generations, we end up fighting our own offspring for resources.

SETI not money

[thejuggler]

My systems are still processing Seti. I never got into the crypto-currency fad. My systems are not making a huge dent in the Seti data, yet they persist. Is there life out there? I want to believe.