First thanks goes to Shane Quinty who posted the news in the forum "S@H Science".

....This radio signal, now seen on three separate occasions, is an enigma. It could be generated by a previously unknown astronomical phenomenon. Or it could be something much more mundane, maybe an artefact of the telescope itself.
.....
But it also happens to be the best candidate yet for a contact by intelligent aliens in the nearly six-year history of the SETI@home project, which uses programs running as screensavers on millions of personal computers worldwide to sift through signals picked up by the Arecibo telescope.
......
David Anderson, director of SETI@home, remains sceptical but curious about the signal. ”It’s unlikely to be real but we will definitely be re-observing it.” Bell Burnell agrees that it is worth persisting with. “If they can see it four, five or six times it really begins to get exciting,” she says

The news appeared first in The New Scientist.

It has meanwhile appeared in different journals in Europe: UK, Scotland, Germany, Italy as well as in Spain.

This news will very probably go around the world very quickly.

For us "crunchers" a GREAT news. It means our work really helps science.

Keep crunching !!

Greetings from Belgium.

Exciting yes but it can take a while before next observation I think.
I just don't understand why we haven't been informed about this signal.
SHGb02+14a do appear in the signal candidate page but any mention
about the importance of it. I would be currious to see how this partular one
looks olike on the screen saver !

Maybe I have missed it somewhere ?
Anyone have more info or can point a link at SETI web site about it ?

Thanks

Friendly
Marc

-.-. --.- -.. -..- . - --... ...-- .-.-. -.-

http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/Candidates/SHGb02+14a/SHGb02+14a.html

> http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/Candidates/SHGb02+14a/SHGb02+14a.html
>

Thanks Mike. I have also seen this page.

What I mean is it doesn't speak by itself. You really have to dig in
to understand that there was something there. I am a lucky one because
I am use with graphs and radio frequency but it is certainly not the
case of all users.

I think it would have been great to have a news posted in "understandable"
language to all. I guess that if they had given the link you have posted
to the journalist they would have never made any news out of it.

I found this not normal that people who reads the newscientist.com
knows more about this signal than us SETI participant and especialy
the users who actually crunched the WU containing this signal.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996341

Friendly
Marc


-.-. --.- -.. -..- . - --... ...-- .-.-. -.-

> I think it would have been great to have a news posted in "understandable"
> language to all. I guess that if they had given the link you have posted
> to the journalist they would have never made any news out of it.
>
> I found this not normal that people who reads the newscientist.com
> knows more about this signal than us SETI participant and especialy
> the users who actually crunched the WU containing this signal.

I'm wondering to see what news will go around the world in the following hours and days about it.

What happens when you do get such a signal? Does a screensaver of fireworks or cowboys and indians appear? Or do you have to pay attention to what appears in the messages tab?

> What happens when you do get such a signal? Does a screensaver of fireworks or
> cowboys and indians appear? Or do you have to pay attention to what appears in
> the messages tab?

Unfortunately nothing specials happens during crunching.

What can be done with S@H Classic is using for example the program Seti Monitor. This program register all the signals of spikes, gaussians, triplets and peaks detected during the crunching. It will give after crunching is finished the power, resolution, absolute power, drift rate, period, score and frequency of all the signals.

With S@H/Boinc, the program BoincLogX does the similar.

> What happens when you do get such a signal? Does a screensaver of fireworks or
> cowboys and indians appear? Or do you have to pay attention to what appears in
> the messages tab?

If you have a good sound card you might ear this
http://www.palantir.net/cgi-bin/file.cgi?file=midi/zarathustra.mid

> What happens when you do get such a signal? Does a screensaver of fireworks or
> cowboys and indians appear? Or do you have to pay attention to what appears in
> the messages tab?

Seti@home finds candidates and thats it. The final verification is done by seti scientists. If the candidate turns out to be earthbound or otherwise "bogus" there's no need for any fireworks ;-) So, to not starting some great big fuzz over a false alarm there are no fireworks.

But, something more interesting is, if we actually find a signal which is verified to be of extraterrestrial intelligent origin how will we (the crunchers) be notified ;-)

And will the project then continue to search for more to document how wide spread intelligence is in the universe, or will it be closed down and the "@home" part be abandoned ;-)

Will we (humanity) settle with the knowledge that there are someone outthere besides us, or will we try to analyze the signal to know what it's purpose is, what it's saing etc (propably the latter, but still..) ;-)


S@h Berkeley's Staff Friends Club © member

Astronomers deny ET signal report

Astronomers have moved swiftly to quell speculation they may have received a deep-space radio signal from ET.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3621608.stm

Quote
"If they can see it four, five or six times it really begins to get exciting," Jocelyn Bell Burnell of the University of Bath in western England told the magazine.
End quote.

From CNN.com.

So we have to show the same signal 4-5 times more then? Pity. But how many sigs exactly are needed to be found? Does anyone know? :)

> So we have to show the same signal 4-5 times more then? Pity. But how many
> sigs exactly are needed to be found? Does anyone know? :)

Some explanation about determining the best candidates can be find here and here and also here.

> > What happens when you do get such a signal? Does a screensaver of
> fireworks or
> > cowboys and indians appear? Or do you have to pay attention to what
> appears in
> > the messages tab?
>
> If you have a good sound card you might ear this
> http://www.palantir.net/cgi-bin/file.cgi?file=midi/zarathustra.mid
>
Kool

This article may explain a bit....