Posted on 02/20/2018 11:46:35 AM PST by nickcarraway
Scientists searching space for intelligent life already have a difficult job, but some are now saying their task is being made even tougher because of digital currencies like Bitcoin.
“We’d like to use the latest GPUs (graphics processing units)… and we can’t get ’em,” Dr. Dan Werthimer told the BBC. The chief scientist of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI Project, says the surging demand for GPUs from cryptocurrency miners is leaving the computer chips in short supply.
“This is a new problem, it’s only happened on orders we’ve been trying to make in the last couple of months,” Dr. Werthimer added. “That’s limiting our search for extra-terrestrials, to try to answer the question, ‘Are we alone? Is there anybody out there?'”
Graphics processing units are high-performance chips used for processing large amounts of computer data. They have also been used for powering high quality video games and are now being stacked together by cryptocurrency miners to “farm” the online cash.
For SETI, the GPUs are needed to process all the different frequency channels the group monitors in outer space. “We don’t know what frequency ET will be broadcasting on and we want to look for lots of different signal types,” Dr. Werthimer explains. SETI’s telescope and lab at UC Berkeley reportedly uses around 100 GPUs to crunch all of the data coming in from space.
The boom in cryptocurrency’s popularity hasn’t just meant smaller supplies of GPUs available, it’s also sent the price soaring as well. “Strong demand in the cryptocurrency market exceeded our expectations,” tech company Nvidia’s CFO Colette Kress said, via Ars Technica.
“We’ll be able to weather it but it is coming out of our contingency budget.” said Prof. Aaron Parsons of UC Berkeley. “We’re buying a lot of these things, it’s going to end up costing about $32,000 extra.” Prof. Parson and his team were reportedly buying their GPUs for a radio telescope in South Africa. Since his team initially priced the chips at around $500 in 2017, the price has doubled to over $1,000 each.
How so? Does the Bible answer this clearly and directly?
I believe it does.
One form of BS collides with another form of BS.
And pass a law requiring them to speak Russian while we are at it.
That way we could indict them when we found them.
Bitcoins are going to crash and we are the only intelligent live in this galaxy.
I tried it but my Pick and Shovel were too big and kept breaking the computer
The reality is that the bible says that God is an extraterrestrial -- the alien being you do't want to believe in.
You don't even have to go very far into it. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Seems pretty clear that God did not come from this planet.
“The Earth” as in the ONLY planet with life.
Welcome to the world of supply and demand. Sorry if nobody is in a hurry to fund your decades long and totally fruitless quest for a signal that you aren’t going to find.
Could you prove there are no unicorns?
“The reality is that the bible says that God is an extraterrestrial — the alien being you do’t want to believe in”
Not really. A deity and an extraterrestrial are two completely different concepts.
If advanced life were out there, it would be way, way out there - it might send a radio message in response to detecting our own radio emissions, but even that would take years of travel time. A goodly number of years, actually, for the round trip.
...
Even if that’s true, I’m contrasting us searching for them with them searching for us. That’s why I don’t care if Bitcoin is taking all the computer time from ET searching.
This article title is completely wrong, you can’t mine Bitcoin with GPU’s, it’s all being done with dedicated ASIC machines such as the Antminer S9 or the Avalon 741 or the Dragonmint or some other ASIC miner. ASIC stands for Application Specific Integrated Circuit. GPU stands for Graphics Processing Unit. Two completely different things.
What is able to be mined with GPU’s is Ethereum and a whole lot of other Alt-coins. But Bitcoin isn’t the culprit here.
Unless you know what Alien life looks like, how would you know it isn't there ?
Sure... WE are in a system isolated by vast distances, but not all planets are.
We are on a thinly populated wisp of the outer edge of our own galaxy.
Imagine what it's like further in where stars are not nearly as far apart.
But that ain't us. So, no amount of imagining is going to change that and move us closer to another solar system.
I have never claimed there are no unicorns.
If all of that excess computer power is just for mining, then what is really the point. I assume they are chasing diminishing returns after a while. Wasn't there a set limit to the total amount of bitcoins?
Human stupidity and foolishness will persist until the Lord returns.
My opinion of these mining activities was fairly well expressed. They are a variation of get rich quick: get rich by neither working nor producing goods and services. If they were ever productive in any way (say if the problems solved were those people were renting time on the network to solve) they’d probably die on the vine eventually rather than go on and on merely consuming resources.
I am always humbled to meet someone such as yourself who knows everything.
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