Good thread. I think the aleins invented the Vlar auto killer.

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[/quote]

Old James

Good thread. I think the aleins invented the Vlar auto killer.

Hahaha!

That would be the evil aliens. The good aliens (Grays I think) invented the reschedule app.

Good thread. I think the aleins invented the Vlar auto killer.

Hahaha!

That would be the evil aliens. The good aliens (Grays I think) invented the reschedule app.

Good point! A good ET would actually be speeding up SETI@Home, so we could join their "club". Maybe they would be volunteer testers. Or moderators ....

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Good thread. I think the aleins invented the Vlar auto killer.

Hahaha!

That would be the evil aliens. The good aliens (Grays I think) invented the reschedule app.

Good point! A good ET would actually be speeding up SETI@Home, so we could join their "club". Maybe they would be volunteer testers. Or moderators ....

Yeah, Ned Ludd and OzzFan (Both great guys by the way).. Are almost certainly aliens. Hehe

Good thread. I think the aleins invented the Vlar auto killer.

Hahaha!

That would be the evil aliens. The good aliens (Grays I think) invented the reschedule app.

Good point! A good ET would actually be speeding up SETI@Home, so we could join their "club". Maybe they would be volunteer testers. Or moderators ....

Yeah, Ned Ludd and OzzFan (Both great guys by the way).. Are almost certainly aliens. Hehe

Klaatu Barada Nikto

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Some people believe ET's are already here. Personally, if I were an ET I would come to a place just like this to learn about humans and to keep a track of how close they're getting to discovering us. And with the added benefit of learning about our information technologies as they develop.

If I had to pinpoint an ET:
He would live in California.
He would be very knowledgeable of computers and networking.
He would post primarily in number crunching.
Last but not least, he would obviously be extremely intelligent.

I can think of several good candidates for an ET. :)

Clever aliens would shroud themselves in secrecy. They wouldn't give themselves away in number crunching. Just saying...

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me@rescam.org

Yeah, Ned Ludd and OzzFan (Both great guys by the way).. Are almost certainly aliens. Hehe

Klaatu Barada Nikto

And then there are other secrets.

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me@rescam.org

Good thread. I think the aleins invented the Vlar auto killer.

Hahaha!

That would be the evil aliens. The good aliens (Grays I think) invented the reschedule app.

Good point! A good ET would actually be speeding up SETI@Home, so we could join their "club". Maybe they would be volunteer testers. Or moderators ....

....they are....

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hehe - Well, according to some scientific sayings -
WE are All Aliens! ;-) Because the first stage of
life on this planet came from the space - as we
are in the middle of it. So as I`ve said before -
We are in fact looking for our own relatives, who
happend to end up somewhere else.. Thats all. ;-D

So to talk about us and them is not right..
Its just Us. lol

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Doesn't seem like it to me.

Do the Berkeley people even talk about ET anymore, or is it all about keeping the projects nuts and bolts working?

It's all about fast computers, optimizations, racking up credits, and other hardware and software stuff I don't understand.

A dummy like me can understand finding ET tho.

Maybe not. It's possible I just don't get what's going on.

Sure, I dig the magnificence of what distributed computing can do.

I'd appreciate it if this thread isn't killed right away. If people can talk about cats and drinking too much and other such stuff, can't a basic question about finding ET be asked?

Chicken Stacker,
I 100% whole heartedly agree with you! And i have been hanging around here for a few years now, i know the story!

Do the Berkeley people even talk about ET anymore, or is it all about keeping the projects nuts and bolts working?

No, the Berkeley staff rarely ever talk about finding ET, or discuss the in-depth science behind the project. 99% of what we hear from the staff at Berkeley is, like you said, about computers, servers, downtime and other computing stuff.

I was not here in 1999 when this project started, maybe the staff discussed the science back then when the project was new. So i assume that in the 10 years that have passed, the staff have grown tired of discussing the science behind SETI.

If you want to discuss the science and you don't want to hear about computing problems, join us in the SETI@home Science message board. We have lots of interesting science discussions!

Chicken Stacker said:

All elegant posts to my cynicism.

I will shut my gob now.

Don't shut your gob about the lack of science information coming out of this project! Its important to talk about it and raise awareness. There have been very few science papers about SETI@home science ever published by the scientists on this project. They have published lots of science papers about distributed computing, but who really cares, we all came here because we want to find ET, right?. Its good to be critical!

And remember, this Cafe is just for small talk to keep people happy while we wait for the next 10 years...LOL

John.

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I think the bias in these Forums to discussions of technical issues results from the fact that everybody just asks those kinds of questions here. You have to dig a little to find the science content, but it is there.

Also, the typical time scales of technical issues and finding ET are quite different. If we found an ET every Tuesday, there would probably be as many posts about that are there are about the Weekly Outrage.

To very roughly quantify that, the Weekly Outrage occurs, well, weekly. An interval between Outrages of 7 days. Finding ET occurs at some interval greater than X, where X is the number of days we have been seriously looking. Say about 40 years, or X > 15,000+ days. So, I would expect the percentage of posts about finding ET here to be something less than 7 / 15,000 = 0.047%. I know that is a vast simplification, and would welcome a refinement of the calculation.

Final observation, from an old timer. These darned kids today expect something to happen right away, just because they clicked the mouse once or twice. Some things take longer than that.

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Don't shut your gob about the lack of science information coming out of this project! Its important to talk about it and raise awareness. There have been very few science papers about SETI@home science ever published by the scientists on this project.

The question I usually ask at this point is: what kind of "science" would you expect? There aren't a lot of waypoints along the path, no way to "almost find" ET. It's either "found" or "not found." If it's not found, what can you say besides "the search continues?"

What they can talk about are ideas to try to winnow the wheat from the chaff, which is what the NTPCKR does, but the ideas and theories, while great, are about ways to search, not any hard results.

They have published lots of science papers about distributed computing, but who really cares, we all came here because we want to find ET. Its good to be critical!

I actually do care about the ideas behind distributed computing. The paper I'd really like to see is on the social aspects of distributed computing -- what makes people so incredibly dedicated that they'll spend thousands of (dollars/euros/spacebucks/etc.) to gear up for the search.

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And dont assume that ET will be nice. Who all is old enough to remember that old Twilight Zone episode, To serve man?

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[/quote]

Old James

Don't shut your gob about the lack of science information coming out of this project! Its important to talk about it and raise awareness. There have been very few science papers about SETI@home science ever published by the scientists on this project.

The question I usually ask at this point is: what kind of "science" would you expect? There aren't a lot of waypoints along the path, no way to "almost find" ET. It's either "found" or "not found." If it's not found, what can you say besides "the search continues?"

Ned thats pure rubbish!

Just because detecting ET is either yes or no, we found other life, or we didn't, does not mean that you cannot write some science papers about the progress you are making. The staff have produced 2 published science papers in the last 10 years about their science. That just does not cut the mustard in the science community.

If the science you are investigating is difficult, you still publish your results no mater what! In the case of looking for ET, they should be publishing science papers, about 1 each year for the last 10 years. This has not happened and it makes SETI scientists look like a mockery in the science community.

Look at our next door neighbour, Einstein@home. Its looking for gravity waves that might not even exist! Do they publish there results to science journals? Yes they do. Einstein has never found a gravity wave, but they have published its findings in science journals! this is why science progresses over time, people publish what they have and have not tried!

John.

---

Don't shut your gob about the lack of science information coming out of this project! Its important to talk about it and raise awareness. There have been very few science papers about SETI@home science ever published by the scientists on this project.

The question I usually ask at this point is: what kind of "science" would you expect? There aren't a lot of waypoints along the path, no way to "almost find" ET. It's either "found" or "not found." If it's not found, what can you say besides "the search continues?"

Ned thats pure rubbish!

Just because detecting ET is either yes or no, we found other life, or we didn't, does not mean that you cannot write some science papers about the progress you are making. The staff have produced 2 published science papers in the last 10 years about their science. That just does not cut the mustard in the science community.

If the science you are investigating is difficult, you still publish your results no mater what! In the case of looking for ET, they should be publishing science papers, about 1 each year for the last 10 years. This has not happened and it makes SETI scientists look like a mockery in the science community.

Look at our next door neighbour, Einstein@home. Its looking for gravity waves that might not even exist! Do they publish there results to science journals? Yes they do. Einstein has never found a gravity wave, but they have published its findings in science journals! this is why science progresses over time, people publish what they have and have not tried!

John.

Gravity waves are a little different, in that there is a solid theory that says they must exist. Proving their existence adds credence to the theory, proving that they don't opens the door for new thinking. Either way, it isn't an open-ended search.

It's Physics. Physics says the universe operates in a specific way.

SETI is not Physics, it's biology. When it comes to life, we have exactly one biosphere that we can look at, ours, and that's it.

We don't know anything about how biology works "out there" and if there is another planet with life, if they'll be intelligent. We don't know how long they'll use radio. So many imponderables.

So, there is one huge difference. For Einstein, "didn't find anything" is an outcome. For SETI, it means we're still looking.

... and I'll repeat my question: what kind of paper, what kind of announcement, might you expect to see?

If you think my statements are rubbish, then give us some examples of a meaningful intermediate result -- that is, something that's science and not engineering.

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hi

i'm quite new, i've had the seti at home running on my computer for many months i just let it run. However i want to understand more about what it is doing and if it is possible my computer can help find something? how will i know if it is?

vxxx

... and I'll repeat my question: what kind of paper, what kind of announcement, might you expect to see?

If you think my statements are rubbish, then give us some examples of a meaningful intermediate result -- that is, something that's science and not engineering.

Ned take the time to read a real science paper published by scientists that are looking for something that might, or might not exist;
Einstein@home front page; http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/

Read;
First report on the S3 analysis - 2005/09/11
Final report on the S3 analysis - 2007/03/28
Report on the S4 analysis - 2008/05/16
(published in Physical Review D)
Report on the first S5 analysis - 2009/05/17
Info on the Arecibo Radio Pulsar Search - 2009/06/23
Arecibo Radio Pulsar Search (Re-)Discoveries - 2009/07/22

**********

Science is not just yes or no, even if your looking for ET. Mankind researches lots of science that has varying outcomes. Mankind has been researching cancer for about 100 years. What if all the cancer research scientists all said;
"No, we have no cure for cancer, no point in publishing science papers to tell other scientists what we studied".

In the case of SETI@home, papers could be published saying things like;
what frequencies they have searched,
how the searched,
how they stored the data,
how they analysed the data,
What algorithms they used,
What parts of the sky they surveyed,
What candidates they looked for,
what difficulties they came accross,
And how they adapted their search over time to learn from the results they were getting.

20 years from now, when SETI@home is long gone, and the SETI@home servers are shut down, where will the science have been recorded? In message board posts?

Do new cancer research scientists have to learn in university about cancer research by reading 2 million message board posts on the cancer research websites? No! They stand on the shoulders of giants because researchers publish their science in credible science journals like Nature that will always be printed and recorded. SETI@home should be regilarly publishing papers in the Astrobiology Journal, a printed publication by NASA and the National Science Foundation.

John.

---

hi

i'm quite new, i've had the seti at home running on my computer for many months i just let it run. However i want to understand more about what it is doing and if it is possible my computer can help find something? how will i know if it is?

vxxx

Vicky,
Read some of the links on this page; http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/sah_about.php

John.

... and I'll repeat my question: what kind of paper, what kind of announcement, might you expect to see?

If you think my statements are rubbish, then give us some examples of a meaningful intermediate result -- that is, something that's science and not engineering.

Ned take the time to read a real science paper published by scientists that are looking for something that might, or might not exist;

When you lead with this statement, my first thought is "does he really think I'm that ignorant -- and I'm not really motivated to continue reading.

If we can keep this civil, I'd appreciate it.

Einstein@home front page; http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/

Read;
First report on the S3 analysis - 2005/09/11
Final report on the S3 analysis - 2007/03/28
Report on the S4 analysis - 2008/05/16
(published in Physical Review D)
Report on the first S5 analysis - 2009/05/17
Info on the Arecibo Radio Pulsar Search - 2009/06/23
Arecibo Radio Pulsar Search (Re-)Discoveries - 2009/07/22

**********

Science is not just yes or no, even if your looking for ET. Mankind researches lots of science that has varying outcomes. Mankind has been researching cancer for about 100 years. What if all the cancer research scientists all said;
"No, we have no cure for cancer, no point in publishing science papers to tell other scientists what we studied".

In the case of SETI@home, papers could be published saying things like;
what frequencies they have searched,
how the searched,
how they stored the data,
how they analysed the data,
What algorithms they used,
What parts of the sky they surveyed,
What candidates they looked for,
what difficulties they came accross,
And how they adapted their search over time to learn from the results they were getting.

20 years from now, when SETI@home is long gone, and the SETI@home servers are shut down, where will the science have been recorded? In message board posts?

Do new cancer research scientists have to learn in university about cancer research by reading 2 million message board posts on the cancer research websites? No! They stand on the shoulders of giants because researchers publish their science in credible science journals like Nature that will always be printed and recorded. SETI@home should be regilarly publishing papers in the Astrobiology Journal, a printed publication by NASA and the National Science Foundation.

John.

Einstein has defined test runs, with a beginning, middle and end. Makes it a lot easier to write a paper reporting the results of S4.

Cancer research is more varied because there are samples of cancer, and things to be studied.

Again, my question is: what can they say besides "We found another 100,000 very weak signals last month, and they appear to be random." "The universe is a noisy place" is not exactly news.

As to your comment about the Forums: the forums are not science, they're just here to provide entertainment to those of us who are interested enough to read them. Maybe, just maybe, some random comment might lead to a new idea, or a better way to organize signals or something like that, but mostly, it's for entertainment.

Calling these Forums "science" is like calling "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" a documentary.

Again, I challenge you: what in your mind would be "science?"

---

Again, I challenge you: what in your mind would be "science?"

In the case of SETI@home, papers could be published saying things like;
what frequencies they have searched,
how the searched,
how they stored the data,
how they analysed the data,
What algorithms they used,
What parts of the sky they surveyed,
What candidates they looked for,
what difficulties they came accross,
And how they adapted their search over time to learn from the results they were getting.

John.

---