LandShark's Blog: SETI@Home

Contact: What happens if a E.T. Singal is Found?!

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 18:47:38 GMT

"This new instrument which—when completed—will brandish 350 antennas, can speed up the search for signals from other societies by hundreds of times and more. Compared to earlier efforts, it will turn SETI on its metal ear. We’re not talking about the difference between a Lexus and a Toyota; we’re talking about the difference between a Lexus and an oxcart.

In the next two dozen years, the Allen Telescope Array will parse the nearest thousand light-years of space. If there are other occupants of this galactic neighborhood, we could turn up a signal.

But then what? Would the discovery be put under wraps, either voluntarily or by government edict? If we found a signal, would you know?

This is among the most commonly asked questions of SETI: what happens in case of a detection. Conditioned by television, movies, and a penchant for expecting conspiracy, a lot of people think that the truth would not be out there. They believe it entirely reasonable to expect that the military, worried that the aliens will threaten the planet, would surround the telescope with chain link, and redirect the data stream to the Pentagon. Another common assumption is that the government, figuring that the citizenry will lose its cool, stampede the streets, and provoke a seismic collapse of polite society, will keep the discovery under wraps. Some even venture the thought that SETI scientists, for unspecified (and hard to imagine) reasons, would deprive themselves of future funding and the Nobel Prize by squirreling away their find.

Not a chance. And the reason I say that is, first and foremost, because the handful of researchers doing SETI experiments are intensely keen to find treasure, not to bury it. But even if you don’t respect the integrity of the scientists, even if you think these dedicated folks have motives that are secret and suspect, then you should at least look at the process. Frankly, secrecy is ruled out by how the experiment is done."

SETI@home Classic: In Memoriam

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 19:04:09 GMT

After 6 years of operation, SETI@home Classic sent out its last workunit. We will clean up and synchronize the Classic stats with the current SETI@home project in the coming weeks. Thanks to all SETI@home Classic participants for their tremendous dedication to the project. You made SETI@home into something of lasting significance.

Read a brief history of SETI@home.

And their new direction hoping to boost computing power

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 19:00:03 GMT

A story about SETI@home's transition to BOINC appears in the Nature web site.

A conversation with the Director of SETI@Home

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 14:25:20 GMT

HERE's an interesting conversation with David Anderson, the founder & director of SETI@Home, talks about SETI@Home and BOINC, plus other DC (distributed computing) project and it's future direction! Good read if you are interesting in distributed computing project mainly SETI@Home or any BOINC projects.

Personally, I can't wait for Folding@Home to join the BOINC infrastructure so I can run both SETI & Folding together!!

HELP ! ! !

Tue, 05 Jul 2005 19:11:17 GMT

Hi guys and gals,

I'm in a Intra-Team Race right now for SETI@Home with my fellow team members. And due to my screwed up strategy (I was holding off a couple machines for the race but put them into work too early before the race even started! ), my team is currently in the last place and is out gunned in production by the other teams badly!! I'm going to put together another machine this week hoping to shorten the distance from the other teams. However, it's still like holding a candle in front of the light according to the latest average production of all the teams. We are currently averaging 4,000 credits less than the 1st place team per week right now, and we are racing to the 500,000 credits (means whoever the first to have 500,000 credits win). At the moment, the 1st place team has just crossed the 1/4 mark (125,000 credits) already. So, time is running out and I'm still out gunning by the others even though I'm one of the top producer within our team...

You can check out the latest stats of this race in HERE. As you can see, we are getting beat up quite badly by the other teams....

Therefore, I'm asking & hoping, some of you guys/gals could help me in the race! All you'll need to do is to simply go HERE to download & install BOINC client (home or work computer or both). Once it's installed, click "Attach to a New Project" and a new project window will pop up asking you the URL of the project and user account.

Project URL = http://setiathome.berkeley.edu

My Account key is (copy & paste) = a310439e52836ef7195c6024c4a6e83a

It WILL NOT disturb you everyday use of the computer in any way at all. Yes, it will use 100% of the CPU cycle, but WILL seamlessly side step when other program need the CPU power, e.g. encoding video, converting MP3s, etc. 'cos it's set to the lowest pirority process. And if you like, you can delete the BOINC program or if you feel like to crunch (the seti data) for me, you can just leave it as is after the race. If you have any question, feel free to email me at llgaryllatgmaildotcom

I will be greatly appreicated for any of your help!!

Thank you, thank you!!

SETI@Home

Thu, 23 Jun 2005 04:11:27 GMT

Just add one of my hobby, SETI@Home in my Blog. I hope everyone will have a better look at what SETI@Home is all about and may be you would like to help too.

I'll probably post up an old article of mine about SETI@Home later on too.