SETIlive.org - by the SETI Institute

The SETI institute has started a brand new website, http://setilive.org/, that allows volunteers to actively get involved in searching for aliens. They want your "brain power", not your computer! You login and look at the pictures of the signals they are receiving on the Allen Telescope Array, and try to spot the artificial ET signals.

SETIlive.org - http://setilive.org/

BBC News story - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17199882

Physorg.com News Story - http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-seti-setiliveorg-empower-citizen-scientists.html

Space.com News story - http://www.space.com/14723-seti-live-search-extraterrestrials-public.html

Quote from Physorg news story;

Four world premiere programs including Morgan Freeman’s Through the Wormhole, Alien Encounters and NASA’s Unexplained Files will premiere every Tuesday, beginning March 6 throughout the month. Each special world premiere will drive viewers to the SETI Live site and empower citizen scientists everywhere to unite towards a common goal.

Sounds interesting. It sounds like they have a working version of what the guys here at SETI Berkeley have been trying to produce for many years, the "Nit Picker" or "NTPCkr".

Let me finish by stating that the SETI institute has nothing to do with the SETI@home search. They are separate groups doing similar things.

John.

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I registered, read the tutorial, examined and reported back on a number of waterfall images at seti live, yesterday. I saw several vertical or nearly vertical lines in a few of the images. These are obviously artificial radio emissions. Most slanted slightly from the vertical, indicating doppler shift due to relative motion between the receiver and the source. A few appeared to be entirely vertical. One image contained a number of parallel vertical lines, which seem to indicate simultaneous emissions on a number of discrete frequencies. All of the lines I saw yesterday were fairly distinct. I wonder if an automated search program could have missed any of these. Michael

... All of the lines I saw yesterday were fairly distinct. I wonder if an automated search program could have missed any of these. Michael

Something that you can do that a fixed search algorithm such as s@h uses is that you can learn as you go along, so that you will come to recognize what is 'interestingly' unusual or whatever.

The 'whatever' might just be the next big breakthrough...

What might be useful/interesting would be to keep a blog/log of your observations and experiences with the system to compare with other users.

Keep searchin',
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)

I registered, read the tutorial, examined and reported back on a number of waterfall images at seti live, yesterday. I saw several vertical or nearly vertical lines in a few of the images. These are obviously artificial radio emissions. Most slanted slightly from the vertical, indicating doppler shift due to relative motion between the receiver and the source. A few appeared to be entirely vertical. One image contained a number of parallel vertical lines, which seem to indicate simultaneous emissions on a number of discrete frequencies. All of the lines I saw yesterday were fairly distinct. I wonder if an automated search program could have missed any of these. Michael

Michael,
Thats very interesting! Its often crossed my mind that, in among all the interference that gets removed from SETI searches, there could well be the very signal we are looking for. Michael that really is food for thought, even though many of the lines you saw are possibly local signals. Just imagine if just one of those lines really was ET!

John.

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Going back to SETI Live and doing some more work yesterday, I found that I was seeing some much subtler lines; things that a computer might reasonably have missed. Very possibly part of learning to work with this system. ( For some reason, human-like visual interpretation has been one of the more difficult things to teach computers to do.) I wonder, of course, if I am seeing valid, weak traces of radio emissions, or am being misled by the well-known human propensity to impose order on a truly random collection of bits and pieces. In many instances there is no certain answer to this question. Signal or noise can be a judgement call here. Michael

Michael Watson,
I like your logical way of thinking. I'll be honest here, if SETIlive can get people who think logically like yourself, they will have one very powerful team of citizen scientists. It will be way more powerful than any computer! Why.... Because human beings have intuition!

John.

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Michael Watson,
I like your logical way of thinking. I'll be honest here, if SETIlive can get people who think logically like yourself, they will have one very powerful team of citizen scientists. It will be way more powerful than any computer! Why.... Because human beings have intuition!

John.

Thanks for that, John. Anyone who wants to really understand how ambiguity and intuition come into the picture in analyzing these 'waterfall' displays could do no better than to take part in the process themselves. There is the added advantage that anyone who is regularly active at SETI LIve will be among the first to know if a candidate SETI signal is discovered. This would cause the ATA to cease its regular survey of planets in the Kepler field, and dwell upon which ever system may be the source of such a signal. This would presumably show up in the selection of targets offered to the public for analysis, contracting it down from a substantial number to only one. Michael

Signed up, but their tutorial seems to be having issues loading some graphics, will try their site back a little later today. Perhaps it is just getting too many hits right now.

Thanks for the link and information!

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I know we are not alone, I just hope to see proof in my lifetime...

Michael Watson,
I like your logical way of thinking. I'll be honest here, if SETIlive can get people who think logically like yourself, they will have one very powerful team of citizen scientists. It will be way more powerful than any computer! Why.... Because human beings have intuition!

John.

Thanks for that, John. Anyone who wants to really understand how ambiguity and intuition come into the picture in analyzing these 'waterfall' displays could do no better than to take part in the process themselves. There is the added advantage that anyone who is regularly active at SETI LIve will be among the first to know if a candidate SETI signal is discovered. This would cause the ATA to cease its regular survey of planets in the Kepler field, and dwell upon which ever system may be the source of such a signal. This would presumably show up in the selection of targets offered to the public for analysis, contracting it down from a substantial number to only one. Michael

If i had the time Michael, i would spend some time doing the SETIlive thing. But i don't at the moment.

About a year ago i mentioned here on these forums that i kinda stumbled upon something unusual. Well i have been carrying out that research ever since. It now takes up all of my time. I've just stoped talking about it on these forums, but the research continues.

But i do agree, SETI live does sound like its going to be very worth while. Its time well spent doing something that has great value.

John.

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So if by means of observation you think what you are seeing are "valid, weak traces of radio emissions", how would such weak traces show up or possibly be detected by means of the Seti@home client being run by a user?

Is it really supposed to be all noise or do you ever get a clean signal?

My guess is that scientists are trying to be able to obtain waterfall plots of a signal as it is being detected. I assume you are trying to detect a pulse of interest and from then trying to determine whether such a pulse is carrying something of interest.

Does it possibly show up in the numbers being reported, or may it possibly be visible in the graphics as well?

Anyway, what is the point of having the graphics showing up in the window which comes with a running Seti@home task containing the corresponding graphics for such a running task?

Is it ever meant to be showing anything of possible significance? The way this graphics is showing up on a users monitor may be as a result of the graphics skin which has been selected in the preferences of the account for such a user.

So if by means of observation you think what you are seeing are "valid, weak traces of radio emissions", how would such weak traces show up or possibly be detected by means of the Seti@home client being run by a user?

Is it really supposed to be all noise or do you ever get a clean signal?

My guess is that scientists are trying to be able to obtain waterfall plots of a signal as it is being detected. I assume you are trying to detect a pulse of interest and from then trying to determine whether such a pulse is carrying something of interest.

Does it possibly show up in the numbers being reported, or may it possibly be visible in the graphics as well?

Anyway, what is the point of having the graphics showing up in the window which comes with a running Seti@home task containing the corresponding graphics for such a running task?

Is it ever meant to be showing anything of possible significance? The way this graphics is showing up on a users monitor may be as a result of the graphics skin which has been selected in the preferences of the account for such a user.

The particular portion of the radio spectrum addressed by the SETI Live project is reported to be filled with terrestrial radio signals. These are said to interfere with an automated SETI search to such an extent that it is not practical to examine them in this way. Too many false alarms caused by our own signals, apparently. &&& One sees signals of varying strength levels. These range from the obvious to those so faint that their existence is somewhat doubtful. The weaker signals are thought to be of greater interest. These are presumably more likely to be extraterrestrial in origin. &&& We examine live signals when the ATA is operating, and archived data when it is not. If enough people report the same signal trace, the array will interrupt its regular survey of the Kepler Field to look again at the area indicated. &&& An apparently extraterrestrial signal that persists, so that it can be checked thoroughly, and independently confirmed is being sought. Depending on the nature and strength of such a signal, it may or may not be possible to immediately discern its content. &&& We see only the graphical 'waterfall' display, which is a time/frequency spectrogram. &&& I couldn't say why a waterfall display is offered by SETI@Home. Possibly because it provides visual interest. I note that some have expressed an interest in various traces appearing on this display. Michael

This looks to be a worthwhile project. Our brain is superior to a computer for pattern recognition, especially in low-SNR data. There's definitely a lot of junk in there. I've done 2100 classifications and called almost 1300 signals. Most are easily identifiable as satellite signals or terrestrial RFI, but I can certainly see how a computer would go haywire trying to sort through all this.

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This looks to be a worthwhile project. Our brain is superior to a computer for pattern recognition, especially in low-SNR data. There's definitely a lot of junk in there. I've done 2100 classifications and called almost 1300 signals. Most are easily identifiable as satellite signals or terrestrial RFI, but I can certainly see how a computer would go haywire trying to sort through all this.

Even better... Humans can learn what to look for from experience and even from guidance...

And at about 30W powered from sugar, it's quite an efficient supercomputer also!

Keep searchin',
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)

The brain is of course a pattern recognizer; but I doubt it could beat a computer at detecting signals embedded in noise. Listen to an old modem using QAM modulation and you will be hard pressed to tell the zero's from the one's at say 56 Kbps., yet, a modem does it quite well with lots of processing as long as the noise and bandwidth are within reason. If you can estimate the form of the signal correctly you can do even better by using advanced techniques--See "The Wiener Filter"

The assumption is that the spectrum of noise is known--cosmic noise spectra of varying types are well known. Auto correlation will bring out a non random signal--Thats a lot of computing since Fourier Transforms require a fair amount of computing as well

Check out Wiener's book on signal processing.

You're comparing auditory recognition with visual recognition. They're very different, and use different parts of the brain. I'm much better with visual than with audio, as I believe most people are. And of course it's also a matter of training and experience.

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I am talking visual; as an autocorrelation function would give you a graph. You can take a picture of your voice. If you have ever used an oscilloscope you will know what I mean.

I suspect that a trnasmission from another world may not contain audio and if it did we may not recognize it as audio. Visually we could determine that there was intelligence contained in the signal as opposed to thermal noise.

by looking at a dolphin's clicks we could possibly relate them to certain situations better than if we could actually hear them which we can't entirely since our frequency of hearing cuts off around 20,000 cps.

That's a valid point, some things are just beyond our physiological capability to discern. Computers definitely play an important part filling in those gaps. And of course our brain has capabilities that surpass even our best computers when it comes to fast and efficient signal recognition. I'm also quite familiar with how a lot of noise in data can make a computer system go insane and produce total garbage for results. And this I believe is the entire point of the SETILive. I'm finding some nice signals, barely above background, behind some much more powerful RFI. Would the computer have spotted them? Dunno, but I did.

And at about 30W powered from sugar, it's quite an efficient supercomputer also!

And don't forget copious amounts of caffeine for overclocking.

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