SETI@Home Results

[Grutos]

Being the Sci-Fi / Fantasy minded individuals that we all are here, thought that y'all may find the latest results from the SETI@Home distributed computing initiative of interest:
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Armed with the results of 1.4 million years of computer time, SETI@home scientists recently traveled to the Arecibo radio observatoryin Puerto Rico for a closer listen to our 155 top "candidates".

Scientific News
---------------
On March 18, three SETI@home scientists (Paul Demorest, Eric Korpela, and Dan Werthimer) traveled to the Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico, carrying a list of 300 "candidates" - points in the sky where interesting signals were detected by SETI@home not just once but several times over 4 years of observation.

We had been granted 24 hours of telescope time, in three 8-hour periods on consecutive days. An unexpected storm of solar flares cancelled our 2nd and 3rd observing periods. Fortunately, the observatory staff was able to shuffle the schedule and we eventually observed for the full 24 hours. In the end, we were able to re-observe 155 SETI@home candidates. We also observed some other interesting places in the sky: 5 extrasolar planetary systems, 35 nearby Sun-like stars, 15 galaxies, and 6 targets from our companion project, SERENDIP.

These observations are of higher quality than usual, because 1) we used Arecibo's main antenna, the "Gregorian dome", which has a narrower beam and greater sensitivity than the receiver we normally use; and 2) we recorded in 8 bit per sample resolution in addition to the usual 2 bit format.

We did a quick "on the fly" analysis of the data; this didn't reveal any synthetic extraterrestrial signals. The analysis of the 2-bit data will begin shortly, using the regular SETI@home screensaver; we're ironing out some problems with the pointing data. The analysis of the 8-bit data will be done using a new version of SETI@home which is under development, and will be released later this summer.

The Planetary Society web site has an excellent summary of the reobservations: http://planetary.org/stellarcountdown/index.html
Our web site lists the reobservation targets and the 7,000 users whose computations directly contributed to finding them:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/candidates.html

[Ineti]

Pretty damn cool stuff.

And I just love the word "Arecibo." Sounds so smooth, especially when Jodie Foster says it...

[T'lara]

Originally posted by Grutos
Being the Sci-Fi / Fantasy minded individuals that we all are here, thought that y'all may find the latest results from the SETI@Home distributed computing initiative of interest:
=============================

Armed with the results of 1.4 million years of computer time, SETI@home scientists recently traveled to the Arecibo radio observatoryin Puerto Rico for a closer listen to our 155 top "candidates".

Scientific News
---------------
On March 18, three SETI@home scientists (Paul Demorest, Eric Korpela, and Dan Werthimer) traveled to the Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico, carrying a list of 300 "candidates" - points in the sky where interesting signals were detected by SETI@home not just once but several times over 4 years of observation.

We had been granted 24 hours of telescope time, in three 8-hour periods on consecutive days. An unexpected storm of solar flares cancelled our 2nd and 3rd observing periods. Fortunately, the observatory staff was able to shuffle the schedule and we eventually observed for the full 24 hours. In the end, we were able to re-observe 155 SETI@home candidates. We also observed some other interesting places in the sky: 5 extrasolar planetary systems, 35 nearby Sun-like stars, 15 galaxies, and 6 targets from our companion project, SERENDIP.

These observations are of higher quality than usual, because 1) we used Arecibo's main antenna, the "Gregorian dome", which has a narrower beam and greater sensitivity than the receiver we normally use; and 2) we recorded in 8 bit per sample resolution in addition to the usual 2 bit format.

We did a quick "on the fly" analysis of the data; this didn't reveal any synthetic extraterrestrial signals. The analysis of the 2-bit data will begin shortly, using the regular SETI@home screensaver; we're ironing out some problems with the pointing data. The analysis of the 8-bit data will be done using a new version of SETI@home which is under development, and will be released later this summer.

The Planetary Society web site has an excellent summary of the reobservations: http://planetary.org/stellarcountdown/index.html
Our web site lists the reobservation targets and the 7,000 users whose computations directly contributed to finding them:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/candidates.html

Wow, Lyle Lovett is an Alien...

Seriously, my roommate's computers run this program as their screen savers as I can not with my laptop. The two did not tell me about this until I read it here. Most upset rage building.
This is great news I hope we find something that they will willing announce to the world until one scientist can prove it wrong then they can say hey it is a mistake. Not like we have not seen that with other scientific discoveries that may have proven life exists on other planets.

[Grutos]

Yaup - SETI@Home is a very nice DC to run. You can run it in the back-ground full-time (if you have the CPU & RAM to do so) instead of just in Screen Saver mode if your laptop is throwing you curve balls while in screen saver mode.

Another really good DC is United Devices (Now Grid.org). They do all kinds of research from Cancer, Anthrax (banged out possible vaccine and protein strains in only a couple months v. years), and I think that they have a "patriot" research project --- not quite sure what that one all entails, post 9/11.

ArsTechnica's DC Forum. Arsians are into computers, programs, and programming as much as we're into LotR, SW, ST, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy. Good group of geeks to know --- always good to have a geek in yer pocket fer when the PC goes on vacation. Geeks On Call (I love their commercials - so many of my friends would fit right in with them.)