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Search For ET To Look Again At 150 Signals
Science Daily ^ | 3-14(15)-03 | Editorial Staff

Posted on 03/14/2003 6:07:27 AM PST by vannrox

Source:

University Of California, Berkeley

Date:

2003-03-14

Search For ET To Look Again At 150 Signals

BERKELEY ? After more than a million years of computation by more than 4 million computers worldwide, the SETI@home screensaver that crunches data in search of intelligent signals from space has produced a list of candidate radio sources that deserve a second look.

Three members of the SETI@home team will head to Puerto Rico this month to point the Arecibo radio telescope at up to 150 spots identified as the source of possible signals from intelligent civilizations.

SETI@home is a computer program disguised as a screen saver that pops up when a computer is idle and analyzes radio telescope data in search of strong or unusual signals from space. The candidates for re-observation are particularly strong signals or ones that have been observed in the same spot more than once, some of them five or six times.

"This is the culmination of more than three years of computing, the largest computation ever done," said UC Berkeley computer scientist David Anderson, director of SETI@home. "It's a milestone for the SETI@home project."

SETI@home users should find out the results of the re-observations - what The Planetary Society, the founding and principal sponsor of SETI@home, is billing as the "stellar countdown" - within two to three months.

Though excited at the opportunity to re-observe as many as 150 candidate signals, Anderson is cautious about raising people's expectations that they will discover a signal from an extraterrestrial civilization.

"If there is any possibility at all of finding an extraterrestrial signal, it's probably much less than one percent," he said.

UC Berkeley physicist Dan Werthimer, SETI@home chief scientist, isn't getting his hopes up, either. He has conducted a Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) for 24 years - 11 years using Arecibo's 1,000-foot diameter radio dish - and has returned several times to look again at promising locations and frequency ranges to determine if a strong radio signal is more than random noise, a glitch or a passing satellite. He has been disappointed each time.

On the other hand, SETI@home has mobilized so much more computing power than has ever before been thrown at signal analysis, that the team has been able to perform much more detailed and complicated computations on the radio data than now possible with Werthimer's ongoing SETI project, called SERENDIP IV (Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations).

"I give it a one in 10,000 chance that one of our candidate signals turns out to be from ET," said Werthimer, who will head for Puerto Rico on March 16.

"Whether or not SETI@home succeeds in finding evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence at this early date, this project has already made history," said Bruce Murray, chairman of The Planetary Society's board of directors. "SETI@home has performed the most sensitive and detailed SETI sky survey to date, has demonstrated the power of the Internet for doing scientific distributed computing, and has allowed the general public to participate directly in an exciting research project."

To acknowledge the 4,287,000-plus users who have analyzed radio data, the SETI@home team will post on its Web site the names of those participants who flagged the candidate signals as a result of data analysis on their home computers. Each candidate signal was analyzed by several people, because SETI@home sends the same data to more than one person to double-check results.

The list of candidates is far longer than 150, but Werthimer suspects that 150 is the maximum he and two colleagues will be able to observe during the 24 hours total available to them at Arecibo Observatory on Mar. 18-20. Criteria for inclusion in the list include not only a strong radio signal and a signal observed more than once in the same spot and frequency range, but also the signal's proximity to a known star and whether that star is known to have planets.

"These factors let us estimate the probability that a candidate is noise," Anderson said. "We're interested in the candidates that are least likely to be noise."

Limited analysis of the signals will be done while the team collects the data, so that observations can be halted and repeated if a very strong signal reappears. Werthimer will be assisted by graduate student Paul Demorest and project scientist Eric Korpela.

A more detailed analysis will be conducted later, Anderson said, ideally with a new version of the SETI@home screensaver based on a new distributed computing platform called BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing).

SETI@home offered its screensaver to the world in May 1999 as the first example of wide-scale distributed computing - linking idle computers through the Internet to tackle large computational problems. The key to its success was a fruitful collaboration between Anderson, a computer scientist who was one of the principal developers of distributed computing, and Werthimer, a physicist with two decades of experience collecting radio data and parsing it in search of unusual signals from space.

Together, they have drawn in not only sci-fi fans and computer geeks, but many others interested in offering use of their computer to benefit worthwhile projects. SETI@home has spawned numerous other distributed computing projects, including Folding@home to calculate the three-dimensional structure of proteins and climateprediction.net to improve scientific forecasts of 21st century climate.

However, scientists interested in launching similar projects have been daunted by the time and money needed to create the software. To address this problem, Anderson developed BOINC, which is funded by the National Science Foundation. In addition to being a general purpose platform, it allows users to partition their computer time among several distributed computing projects.

"BOINC makes it easy for scientists to set up new SETI@home-type projects, and to update their applications on the fly," he said. "Each change to SETI@home required all our users to download and install a new program version, but BOINC manages this process without user intervention."

BOINC also has the capacity to store data in participants' unused disk space, much the way Napster, Gnutella and Kazaa take advantage of PC hard drives to store MP3 music files.

"The amount of unused disk space out there is staggering," Anderson said. "BOINC will let us experiment with new ways of handling data, like sending it through high-speed Internet connections straight from telescopes to PCs and archiving it redundantly on PC disks. This will greatly expand the scope of our SETI research."

The test case for BOINC is Astropulse, which is designed specifically to re-examine SETI@home data in search of short radio pulses, something neither SETI@home nor any other SETI project currently can do very well. According to Werthimer, Astropulse can detect pulsars, which blink on and off at periods up to nearly a millisecond; evaporating black holes, which should emit a brief pulse of radio waves as they blink out of existence; as well as messages from extraterrestrials.

"Astropulse will be the first big test of BOINC," which also provides enhanced, more realistic 3-D graphics, Anderson said. "If we get maybe 1,000 people participating in the first BOINC trial, we could analyze the re-observation data in just a few days."

"This is a whole new way to look for ET," Werthimer said.

He and Anderson emphasize that, while the re-observations are the culmination of nearly four years of data crunching, SETI@home is not coming to an end. Werthimer hopes to set up a southern hemisphere SETI program at Parkes Observatory in Australia, the data to be fed into SETI@home. And data still comes in from the SERENDIP IV instruments on the Arecibo dish, which will soon use upgraded receivers to record data from more than one area of the sky at once.

"This is a milestone, but SETI@home will go on," Anderson said.

In addition to The Planetary Society, other major funders include Sun Microsystems, the University of California, Quantum Corp., Fujifilm Computer Products and Network Appliance.

Editor's Note: The original news release can be found here.


Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued for journalists and other members of the public. If you wish to quote any part of this story, please credit University Of California, Berkeley as the original source. You may also wish to include the following link in any citation:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/03/030314071113.htm


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: alien; crevolist; explore; gravity; mystery; nasa; people; radio; seti; signal; space; telescope; time; wave; world
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Cool.
1 posted on 03/14/2003 6:07:27 AM PST by vannrox
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To: vannrox
.... ................

2 posted on 03/14/2003 6:13:04 AM PST by vannrox (The Preamble to the Bill of Rights - without it, our Bill of Rights is meaningless!)
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To: vannrox
I like it, but did it seem to anyone else that the article was more of an advertisement than news?
3 posted on 03/14/2003 6:16:19 AM PST by theDentist (So..... This is Virginia..... where are all the virgins?)
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To: vannrox
Heh heh, he said "BOINC". :-)
4 posted on 03/14/2003 6:24:50 AM PST by T Minus Four
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To: vannrox
That was almost a good movie.
5 posted on 03/14/2003 6:34:22 AM PST by TomServo
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To: TomServo
"That was almost a good movie."

If you haven't already, you should read Sagan's book. A curiosity appears on the last 2 pages which may belie his claim to have been an atheist. He describes the work of a sooper-computer calculating PI out to some 80 gazillion places in Base 11 and describes a raster which occurs way out there. He describes it as "The Signature Of The Maker."

Michael

6 posted on 03/14/2003 6:42:19 AM PST by Wright is right! (Have a profitable day!)
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To: Wright is right!
Yeah, I have the book although I have a hard time remembering any of it. Maybe it's time for me to revisit it.
7 posted on 03/14/2003 7:31:51 AM PST by TomServo
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To: TomServo
"Yeah, I have the book although I have a hard time remembering any of it. Maybe it's time for me to revisit it."

Won't take ya 5 minutes. Just go to the last 2 pages.

Michael

8 posted on 03/14/2003 7:40:06 AM PST by Wright is right! (Have a profitable day!)
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To: vannrox
I'm still looking for intelligent life on this planet.

France? nope. Germany, nada. Guinea, please. I'll get back to you.

9 posted on 03/14/2003 7:46:57 AM PST by ScholarWarrior
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To: vannrox
In the top 99.5% of all work done.

It really has been fun.

Your credit:
Name (and URL) CHICAGOFARMER
Results Received 5450
Total CPU Time 7.740 years
Average CPU Time per work unit 12 hr 26 min 25.1 sec
Average results received per day 3.90
Last result returned: Fri Mar 14 14:15:00 2003 UTC
Registered on: Tue May 18 03:06:09 1999 UTC
View Registration Class
SETI@home user for: 3.826 years
Your group info:
You do not currently belong to a group.
You are not currently the founder of any teams.

Your rank: (based on current workunits received)

Your rank out of 4309208 total users is: 22394th place.
The number of users who have this rank: 8
You have completed more work units than 99.480% of our users.
10 posted on 03/14/2003 7:48:28 AM PST by CHICAGOFARMER (Citizen Carry)
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To: theDentist
Research has shown that something like 60% of all news items in papers are sourced from press releases with little or no research or follow-up by the reporter.
11 posted on 03/14/2003 8:15:27 AM PST by sharktrager
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To: vannrox
BOINC also has the capacity to store data in participants' unused disk space, much the way Napster, Gnutella and Kazaa

... or any other file for that matter ...

take[s] advantage of PC hard drives to store [data]

12 posted on 03/14/2003 8:23:35 AM PST by _Jim (//NASA has a better safety record than NASCAR\\)
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To: CHICAGOFARMER
It is a neat idea, and an impressive display of the strength of millions of networked computers. Who needs a billion-dollar computer, when you can link a few million friends together?

I LOVE living in America in the 21st Century!

13 posted on 03/14/2003 9:01:19 AM PST by Teacher317
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To: Teacher317
I LOVE living in America in the 21st Century!


Yep no kidding.

it gives me a reason to leave my 3 computers on at night for a good cause.
14 posted on 03/14/2003 9:07:48 AM PST by CHICAGOFARMER (Citizen Carry)
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To: CHICAGOFARMER
Join the SETI FReepers group:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/stats/team/team_15327.html

15 posted on 03/14/2003 9:11:10 AM PST by fnord ( Hyprocisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue)
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To: RadioAstronomer
A ping for your thoughts... (?)
16 posted on 03/14/2003 9:16:27 AM PST by L,TOWM (Liberals, The Other White Meat)
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To: VadeRetro; jennyp; Junior; longshadow; *crevo_list; RadioAstronomer; Scully; Piltdown_Woman; ...
SETI ping.

[This ping list is for the evolution -- not creationism -- side of evolution threads, and sometimes for other science topics. To be added (or dropped), let me know via freepmail.]

17 posted on 03/14/2003 12:04:01 PM PST by PatrickHenry (The universe is made for life, therefore ID. Life can't arise naturally, therefore ID.)
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To: ScholarWarrior
I'm still looking for intelligent life on this planet.

LOL Best response I've seen all week.

18 posted on 03/14/2003 12:07:52 PM PST by stanz
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To: PatrickHenry
Kinda makes me wish I'd started up the seti@home client the last time that I restared the machine where I used to run it.

--
19 posted on 03/14/2003 12:19:24 PM PST by Dimensio
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To: Wright is right!
"The Signature Of The Maker."

The movie trivialized a number of important features of the book. Despite that I found it an interesting visual experience -- filling in from the book wherever it departed. Jodi Foster is one of two or three Hollywood females that can convincingly play a non-brain dead role. This, unfortunately, wasn't one of them. More the script than the acting.

Sagan was a non-believer, not an atheist. He was hostile to fairy tale religion (isn't everyone hostile to other people's fairy tale religions) but he was open to the idea of a creator.

20 posted on 03/14/2003 12:30:22 PM PST by js1138
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