The first rev of the NTPCkr will not be incorporating Astropulse data - at any rate, if Astropulse detected anything that may also be signs of ETI, then SETI@home would have detected it as well.

- Matt

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-- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person
-- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude

Could anything be reported for Astropulse for "sort of" NTPCkr-style for anything found? For example, something along the lines of what is done over on Einstein@home for their (re-)discovered pulsars list?

A running tally of "hits" should be good to boost morale and might even be useful for other searchers and searches.

Keep up the good work!

Regards,
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Looking forward to this! Way to go Matt and everyone else involved in the project!

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The first rev of the NTPCkr will not be incorporating Astropulse data - at any rate, if Astropulse detected anything that may also be signs of ETI, then SETI@home would have detected it as well.

- Matt

Sorry, but have I missed something ? You developed Astropulse to detect some things that the original S@H (Multi-beam) could not detect, now you say you won't miss anything by ignoring Astropulse data ?

. . . clears throat - uhmmmm, any News to Post here?

. . . clears throat, AGain - uhmmmm, any News to Post here?

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BOINC Wiki . . .

Science Status Page . . .

what is the likehood of a signal given off by any trasitent alien craft, setalines, being captured by radio telescopes

Any NITPCKR news??

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I guess that possible candidates found by means of the Seti@home client are currently being re-observed by means of the Arecibo Radio Telescope.

Can something new be learnt or found by means of such re-obervations of possible candidates?

Possibly what was once a candidate might well be eliminated from the list of candidates as well in such instances where there appears to be nothing found.

The opposite might go as well. A re-observation of a candidate might return the similar signal or result once more making it even more interesting.

But still there may be a long way (or at least some way) to go in order to find something of real interest. A gaussian score (or two) is not necessarily the same as an intelligent signal.

Lately I have come to believe that this may be a failed strategy. Finding a repeated signal at the same location would mean that a broadcast situation would be in effect. My guess is that only a focused high intensity beam (which would be sprayed in randon directions) could reach us. No broadcasts have been found and we may not be able to find them if they are out to say 1000 light years. There are not that many stars out to that distance. The focused beacon would not repeat since they wouldn't know where we are and our radiation is only our a little more than 100 light years.

I think that if a signal shows signs of having intelligence (non random information) then it should be examined for a "we are here" type of message

> My guess is that only a focused high intensity beam (which would be sprayed in randon directions) could reach us.


If a focused beam by some chance should reach us and by means of some coincidence be detected here, how would such a focused beam (which then would be a radio beam) look like (meaning its possible contents)?

In addition, the duration of such a beam could be quite short in length, possibly only seconds or even less than that.

Would the contents of such a beam be translatable by us and its meaning being interpreted as well as understood?

In any case a possible message of intelligent nature could be broadcast by means of such a beam and could possibly be detected.

Also there may exist other Type 0 civilizations out there like our own who may chose to be foolish enough to make their presence be known to others in the distance. If so, we are lucky to be knowing about such presence.

At the Lyman Hydrogen line the bit rate (Bandwidth) would be sufficient to acquire a longish message in a fraction of a second. Say, a count of the first 50 prime numbers and then a bitmap image that possibly could identify their home planet. A reply would be meaningless since they would almost surely be more than 100 light years away.

It would be enough probably for us to know that there is someone else and possibly where they were.

So... is this project dead or what?

There is apparently an unofficial Nitpicker program running behind the scenes, which isn't being made public. The problem has been that due to financial constraints intended Nirtpicker machines have had to be utilised for other roles, and the staff isn't there to run an official Nitpicker project. Don't hold your breath.

Then it would be a very good thing to spend the two minutes to communicate what is going on behind the scenes.
Many people support the project but they also want to know about the problems and successes (and the general "what's going on" stuff).

We all know that the project has to deal with financial and personnel issues but sometimes it's easier if you share all that crap with the crowd.

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Om mani padme hum.

Berkeley SETI Research Center on FB asked for questions that may be picked by a member of the team and answered in a short video. I asked about the status of the NTPCkr... Link here.

I appreciated a response, and I have to be honest, I had no idea that the hardware requirements needed to run the NTPCkr were so harsh.

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IF 10K is what is needed I think we can do it with a fund raiser.

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Matt says 20-30k dollars - and that's just for the hardware, add a chunk for the software and running costs. A fund raiser for say $40k, that wold be really something else.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

So every day the project runs we're basically adding more and more data points to a database that is unmanageable.

Unmanageable with current equipment and with insufficient resources for an underfunded staff.

If the equipment could be "upgraded" to manage the database, would the resources be available to fund proper staff levels to use said equipment before it again becomes obsolete. (That is a vicious circle, not really a question.)


With the above in mind, didn't the GPU Users Group, not all that long ago, do some great work upgrading equipment for the project toward this end?

Apparently the problem is the simple fact that we are storing every scan and processing them after the fact. To my simple mind it would be better to scan them for a significant "signal" as they roll in off of the antenna. I guess that this is where we need to apply massive computing power which we don't have at this location hence the dispersion to the at home computers. Thus we are storing and processing a lot of useless information.

I presume that results are discarded if the crunching at home shows no promise and that only good candidates are stored for later match and analysis (??). What percentage of work units are stored for future matches--or are even the non-promising ones stored .

How did the Allen Array function while it was running ??

Perhaps a half dozen X-box or Wii processors could strip and discard the bad (unpromising) ones right away before they are sent off for further look-sees.

How does the MIP count compare with Active Seti@home processors and these other graphic processors?

Well listen, if we can raise the money towards the implementation of the NTPCkr, I think the S@H project would be all the better for it. It's a LOT of money, but surely we can pick away at it with some fundraising :) I assume that when you donate you can choose what you would prefer your donation to go towards in that here text box...I hope the read it, otherwise... :/

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Donating towards a particular goal is good however I choose to donate directly to the project and let them figure out what is most needed be it manpower or hardware.

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