Any results??

Questions and Answers : Getting started : Any results??

Author	Message
Daniel Send message Joined: 4 May 11 Posts: 5 Credit: 1,134 RAC: 0	Message 1104366 - Posted: 8 May 2011, 11:13:13 UTC Last modified: 8 May 2011, 11:14:34 UTC
	So I've been processing for a while and by the look of the per-task stats, there are already many many signals found of each type. Are those being filtered additionaly after I report the task? Right now I'm looking at a really persistant triplet, the task is about 30% complete. Does the SETI@home app filter the non-ET signals, or that filtering is done to the already reported tasks? Also I found some stats somewhere (EDIT: here it is http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/sci_status.html) to the total signals reported and they were hundreds of thousands, millions +. Is anything done to those singals? Does any1 look to them? Where can I find news on what is being done? In few words - where can I see that what I'm doing is really used for finding ETI? Thanks :)
	ID: 1104366 ·

Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 9 Apr 02 Posts: 12012 Credit: 19,601,608 RAC: 43,840	Message 1104415 - Posted: 8 May 2011, 16:32:39 UTC - in response to Message 1104366.
	Before the workunits are sent out, SETI@Home does minimal filtering to reduce the amount of local radioo frequency interference (RFI). Anything over a certain power is assumed to be coming from a local source and therefore discarded. The SETI@Home project is mostly in it's data collecting stage. We crunch the results and it gets sent back to the servers which then plot out points in the sky which might be of future interest. Since observing the sky costs money from whatever observatory is being used (in SETI's case, the Arecibo satellite dish), and the project has been very close to closing it's doors due to lack of funding, the second phase hasn't even gotten a chance to begin. So right now, the results that are collected are sitting in a database and may never be acted upon due to funding issues.
	ID: 1104415 ·

Daniel Send message Joined: 4 May 11 Posts: 5 Credit: 1,134 RAC: 0	Message 1104434 - Posted: 8 May 2011, 17:58:18 UTC - in response to Message 1104415. Last modified: 8 May 2011, 17:58:33 UTC
	Isn't SETI (in general) funded by your government? If so, why isn't SETI@home? I imagine the costs for running a few servers to accept processed tasks can't be that high..
	ID: 1104434 ·

Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 9 Apr 02 Posts: 12012 Credit: 19,601,608 RAC: 43,840	Message 1104445 - Posted: 8 May 2011, 18:22:07 UTC - in response to Message 1104434.
	Isn't SETI (in general) funded by your government? If so, why isn't SETI@home? Funding is provided by way of grants, and granted funds are not permanent. SETI@Home initially had funding when it started sometime back in the late 1990s. The funding for SETI@Home has since ran out long ago, and only continues to exist through private donations. Dr. Eric Korpela was able to secure funding for AstroPulse by writing it up as a new "project", but I'm not aware of how much funding there is or how long it will last. I imagine the costs for running a few servers to accept processed tasks can't be that high.. The most recent budget from last year indicates that it costs over half a million U.S. dollars ($548,200) to fund SETI@Home for a year.
	ID: 1104445 ·

John McLeod VII Volunteer developer Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 15 Jul 99 Posts: 22343 Credit: 440,201 RAC: 100	Message 1104449 - Posted: 8 May 2011, 18:27:39 UTC
	Yes, there is additional work done after you report the results of a task. First, your task is compared against at least one other result from a different user for the exact same date. If these are close enough, one of them is entered in the science database. The results in the science database from the exact same location in the sky are then scanned to see if the signal is persistent. There might be one observation / year of a particular point in the sky, so the comparisons take place much after any particular task is complete. (See discussions of NITPCKR). ____________ BOINC WIKI
	ID: 1104449 ·

Odysseus Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 26 Jul 99 Posts: 1786 Credit: 3,765,674 RAC: 490	Message 1104558 - Posted: 9 May 2011, 1:21:42 UTC - in response to Message 1104434. Last modified: 9 May 2011, 1:22:08 UTC
	There may still be some US government funding of “SETI in general”—I guess that partly depends on whether you consider associated efforts, e.g. the search for other potentially habitable planetary systems, to be included—but, as others have said, there certainly has been none for SETI@home in recent years. I believe BOINC development receives continuing support from the National Science Foundation, but it serves a pretty broad range of scientific disciplines. ____________
	ID: 1104558 ·

Questions and Answers : Getting started : Any results??