The Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence

[QuintEssence]

SETI, or the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, is a scientific effort seeking to determine if there is intelligent life outside Earth. SETI researchers use many methods. One popular method, radio SETI, listens for artificial radio signals coming from other stars. SETI@home is a radio SETI project that lets anyone with a computer and an Internet connection participate.

It has been started by the university of berkeley and uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

they plan to use the collective computing power of computers all over the world to check data integrity of signals, remove radio interference and identify probable candidates (or ET's )

to learn more about it..see this link http://setiathome2.ssl.berkeley.edu/index.html

this project is being supported by SUN microsystems, University of California, Planetary Society, nVIDIA, Fuji, HP and other companies.

the tech details are here http://setiathome2.ssl.berkeley.edu/learnmore.html

the planetary society homepage is here http://www.planetary.org/html/UPDATE...en_signal.html

[vineetmanghani]

d00d, these people have been at it since I don't know how many years, and they don't have crap to show for it.

I downloaded the SETI@home client a couple of year back, and my computer spent a month analysing one block of data....I gave up after that.

[DesiGuru]

Atleast for now and this forum maybe we should focus more on the
search for intelligent life on earth (india) = CAT;

just kidding...
Anyone who wants to give us a litle more general gas on SETI is welcome...

have fun,

K

[pagalguy]

Check the below post. Its a very old post and it was something I thought all of us PGites could do for a good cause and pretty soon become the largest group for 'Folding" in India

If interested, read the below thread and bump it back up and lets see how it goes. Atleast finding a cure of cancer is better than finding ETs!


http://www.pagalguy.com/cat/showthread.php?t=844 (Help finding a cure for diseases including cancer)

[64BitWhore]

Originally Posted by vineetmanghani

d00d, these people have been at it since I don't know how many years, and they don't have crap to show for it.

I downloaded the SETI@home client a couple of year back, and my computer spent a month analysing one block of data....I gave up after that.

That's exactly the point, albeit a missed one. What they're doing is passive listening, which means you never know when you might hear something. The equipment used is not exactly capable of picking up alien-alien local broadcasts but theoretically a pair of such telescopes as SETI uses could communicate across galaxies. If they had the "crap to show for it" they wouldn't be needing your assistance.

As for analysing one month's worth of downloaded data, their computers could probably do that in a few minutes. So the assistance was less than the proverbial drop in the ocean. They need distributive computing aka SETI@home only because they still have less computing power than needed..

Originally Posted by pagalguy

Atleast finding a cure of cancer is better than finding ETs!

Umm.. not really! Finding ETs could prove to be the golden bullet.. provided they don't like to serve us fried instead

[kamakazi]

i have been running seti since a long time lot of ppl are worried about privacy implications about running such thing on their comps

[64BitWhore]

True.. Infact I believe the @home model is seriously flawed, since it requires a long-term commited interest on the part of the home user, but the actual usage pattern observed will fluctuate widely since it essentially seen as a 'fad' to use the client.

It would have been better if they could have simply got commitments from corporates to let the client run on all their PCs, or perhaps at night.. on spare capacity. The computing power obtained would be limited but stable in quantity..

Of course this current model is good for distributed computing projects with a short timeframe and identifiable aim - like brute-forcing passwords - where the project will have completed by the time public interest wanes; or atleast a large part of the probable answer space will have been eliminated.