WOW! Where on earth did that come from?

Message boards : Number crunching : WOW! Where on earth did that come from?
Message board moderation

To post messages, you must log in.

AuthorMessage
Richard Haselgrove Project Donor
Volunteer tester

Send message
Joined: 4 Jul 99
Posts: 14649
Credit: 200,643,578
RAC: 874
United Kingdom
Message 953939 - Posted: 11 Dec 2009, 18:24:17 UTC

This thread is in response to Reuben's suggestion in silly questions. This is how I found what the telescope was looking at when it recorded a task with a lot of pulses.

But first, a bucket of cold water over the whole idea. As the thread title suggests, it's more than likely that the pulses came from planet earth. If finding ET was as simple as picking up one batch of pulses, we'd all have said 'been there, done that' and moved on to something else by now. So don't go mad, and start ringing up your local radio observatory, claiming that you know where ET lives: even if you're right, and you have picked up the elusive 'WOW!' signal, all you really know is where her spaceship was parked two and a half years ago. Can you even remember where your own car was parked that night?

So, in the spirit that it's all just a bit of fun, and merely gives us something to while away the long winter evenings (in the earth's northerm hemisphere, at least), here goes.

Let's start with the task that sparked off the question: Luke's task 1430354862

You need to get hold of the original WU data for that task. If you're serious about this, you'll already be running something like BoincLogX, so the data from your own WUs will be preserved. But if you aren't, or you're looking at somebody else's task, you still have a chance.

The WU files are stored in http://boinc2.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah/download_fanout - but you won't find it there. There are a thousand (and twenty four) subdirectories: please don't even think about looking in each one until you find it. Either you, or the SETI servers, will go mad before you find it. Here's the smart way.

First, get the WU name: 03mr07ah.12102.375738.4.10.37, in this case (ignore the _1 on the end, which just identifies the task replication number).

Then, find the MD5 hash of the name. I used md5 Hash Generator just because it was the first one Google found. Paste in the WU name (with no spaces or newlines), and the answer should be "63758a55a8ffc4680623ca183443defb".

You want the bit I've picked out in red - characters 6 to 8. That's a55 this time. And then you want to narrow things down even further, by taking 'modulo 4' of the first character. That's the remainder when you divide by four - here's a crib:

[ 0, 4, 8, c ] --> (0)
[ 1, 5, 9, d ] --> 1
[ 2, 6, a, e ] --> 2
[ 3, 7, b, f ] --> 3

Putting it all together, that tells you that the WU is in this subdirectory of the fanout:

http://boinc2.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah/download_fanout/255/

And here it is:

http://boinc2.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah/download_fanout/255/03mr07ah.12102.375738.4.10.37

You can quickly see the answer to the original question:

      <start_ra>5.3250722193798</start_ra>
      <start_dec>9.6094136906623</start_dec>
      <end_ra>5.3250789007916</end_ra>
      <end_dec>9.609325360211</end_dec>

or, to put it another way,

start: 5.3250722193798,9.6094136906623
end: 5.3250789007916,9.609325360211

If you have a recent copy of Google Earth (any time in the last couple of years), you can change to a sky view with View|Explore >. Paste those figures into a location search, and you'll see ....

.... absolutely nothing. The proverbial black cat in a coal cellar. Zoom out to see first some faint galaxies, then some insignificant stars, and eventually the constellations.

Enjoy. Share if you find anything interesting.
ID: 953939 · Report as offensive
1mp0£173
Volunteer tester

Send message
Joined: 3 Apr 99
Posts: 8423
Credit: 356,897
RAC: 0
United States
Message 953980 - Posted: 11 Dec 2009, 20:53:48 UTC - in response to Message 953939.  


.... absolutely nothing. The proverbial black cat in a coal cellar. Zoom out to see first some faint galaxies, then some insignificant stars, and eventually the constellations.

Enjoy. Share if you find anything interesting.

<sarcasm>
But, but, but.....

Couldn't that mean that that area is simply overflowing with black holes?

Imagine some sort of pan-dimensional beings that live and play along the event horizon?

Isn't it as likely that there is something there, instead of nothing at all?

Those twelve pulses could be loaded with data, we just didn't record them at a high enough sample rate to see the bits!
</sarcasm>

Sorry, I'll behave now.
ID: 953980 · Report as offensive
Profile Bill Walker
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 4 Sep 99
Posts: 3868
Credit: 2,697,267
RAC: 0
Canada
Message 954001 - Posted: 11 Dec 2009, 21:38:58 UTC - in response to Message 953980.  

.... absolutely nothing. The proverbial black cat in a coal cellar.


Of course, that is what THEY would want us to see when we looked there .....

ID: 954001 · Report as offensive
Profile Jord
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 9 Jun 99
Posts: 15184
Credit: 4,362,181
RAC: 3
Netherlands
Message 954009 - Posted: 11 Dec 2009, 22:15:03 UTC

They may have mastered the art of cloaking their worlds and ships. On the other hand, how do you know it isn't Google or the provider of the actual photos of the sky (NASA?) that's censoring what's actually visible there? Better yet, how do you know for sure that what Google Sky says is there, is actually that bit of the sky?

I'll go take my meds now, yes. :-)
ID: 954009 · Report as offensive
Profile skildude
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 4 Oct 00
Posts: 9541
Credit: 50,759,529
RAC: 60
Yemen
Message 954021 - Posted: 11 Dec 2009, 22:56:28 UTC - in response to Message 954009.  

heck if we can create radar eluding planes how hard would it be for a space race to do it


In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope
ID: 954021 · Report as offensive
nemesis
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 12 Oct 99
Posts: 1408
Credit: 35,074,350
RAC: 0
Message 954063 - Posted: 12 Dec 2009, 1:43:44 UTC

that spot is near a infrared hotspot and a microwave coldzone.
maybe a spinning pulsar obscured by dust?
ID: 954063 · Report as offensive
kittyman Crowdfunding Project Donor*Special Project $75 donorSpecial Project $250 donor
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 9 Jul 00
Posts: 51468
Credit: 1,018,363,574
RAC: 1,004
United States
Message 954065 - Posted: 12 Dec 2009, 1:52:50 UTC

Uh, oh........

Klingon's cloaking failed for a moment.......
"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

ID: 954065 · Report as offensive
Luke
Volunteer developer
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 31 Dec 06
Posts: 2546
Credit: 817,560
RAC: 0
New Zealand
Message 954066 - Posted: 12 Dec 2009, 1:52:59 UTC

I prefer to use Microsoft Worldwide telescope. I haven't tried it in Google Sky, but in WW Telescope the location is in Orion. Is this correct?

- Luke.
- Luke.
ID: 954066 · Report as offensive
Cosmic_Ocean
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 23 Dec 00
Posts: 3027
Credit: 13,516,867
RAC: 13
United States
Message 954071 - Posted: 12 Dec 2009, 2:08:51 UTC - in response to Message 954009.  

They may have mastered the art of cloaking their worlds and ships. On the other hand, how do you know it isn't Google or the provider of the actual photos of the sky (NASA?) that's censoring what's actually visible there? Better yet, how do you know for sure that what Google Sky says is there, is actually that bit of the sky?

I'll go take my meds now, yes. :-)

And this is why everyone is encouraged to get their own optical telescopes and look into the sky for themselves. Or if you have the resources, build your own radio telescope. I want to do that someday.
Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)
ID: 954071 · Report as offensive
nemesis
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 12 Oct 99
Posts: 1408
Credit: 35,074,350
RAC: 0
Message 954095 - Posted: 12 Dec 2009, 3:17:44 UTC - in response to Message 954071.  

ummm
its not all that undoable a project...
there are old satellite dishes everywhere...
ID: 954095 · Report as offensive
Profile Jord
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 9 Jun 99
Posts: 15184
Credit: 4,362,181
RAC: 3
Netherlands
Message 954119 - Posted: 12 Dec 2009, 5:03:22 UTC - in response to Message 954066.  

I prefer to use Microsoft Worldwide telescope. I haven't tried it in Google Sky, but in WW Telescope the location is in Orion. Is this correct?

In Google Sky 5.3250722193798,9.6094136906623 puts us between Pisces and Pegasus, on the South side of Pegasus.
ID: 954119 · Report as offensive
Profile zoom3+1=4
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 30 Nov 03
Posts: 65709
Credit: 55,293,173
RAC: 49
United States
Message 954124 - Posted: 12 Dec 2009, 5:58:02 UTC - in response to Message 954065.  

Uh, oh........

Klingon's cloaking failed for a moment.......

Remember "Pavel Checkov says that's a Russian Inwention". ;)
The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's
ID: 954124 · Report as offensive

Message boards : Number crunching : WOW! Where on earth did that come from?


 
©2024 University of California
 
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.