Curious if I am missing a page with any 'finds' that have been found? Ha, obvioulsy if ET was found it would be all over, but just other general stats from AP or any of the other crunching. Curious how often the data gets analyzed and if it gets sent elsewhere for confirmation, scopes and such. Just my random Tuesday morning questions!
Thanks!

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In the original project there was a page with interesting signals for reobservation. That was when there was a timetable of "initial scan for xx months" "observe interesting results for xx months" after that.

With the current shoestring budget I don't know if they have any such documents. The way Matt stated they are trying to work with the science db "to be able to actually work with it" I'm not sure if our results are doing much at the moment.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

I guess my next question would be are they activley looking at the results coming in or are they storing them for future study? Given the increase in GPU cruching the new intel app I know results must be flooding in by the second. Curious how much is actually looked at or if they are days/months/years behind?

I was going to ask how 'old' the data is being cruched because I did not see the collection date in the properties window, but it shows it is the graphics window. Would be nice to see the specs shown in the graphics window in the properties, position, date, etc.

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I guess my next question would be are they activley looking at the results coming in or are they storing them for future study? Given the increase in GPU cruching the new intel app I know results must be flooding in by the second. Curious how much is actually looked at or if they are days/months/years behind?

I was going to ask how 'old' the data is being cruched because I did not see the collection date in the properties window, but it shows it is the graphics window. Would be nice to see the specs shown in the graphics window in the properties, position, date, etc.

The collection date is coded into every task name (first six characters) - ddmmyy.

It would have been fun to see some "results" of what we're doing here. Absolutely.

It would have been fun to see some "results" of what we're doing here. Absolutely.

We're trying to find ET's and I'm sure that if we find any we'll be the 1st to know. ;-)

Cheers.

My post was more in line with the first post, really. I'm not talking about confirmed alien communication, but unconfirmed clues that's later discarded. Just for fun and motivation.

When they get the code sorted out properly for NTPCKR to become fully operational then I'd guess that we'll get to see those clues.

Cheers.

That would be awesome. There's probably a lot of curious people in here (that's probably why they joined) that would like to see that kind of information.

This thread may prove useful.

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I totally agree with the last post in the cited thread.

Imagine if SETI doesn't find the signal in another 100 years. How much interest would there be then? Most people will say, "we've been looking for over 100 years, it's a wasted effort!" It could just as easily be seen as a marketing gimmick that people will start to get sick of hearing.


Given the scale of the cosmos and the number of planets out there, a hundred years is in the realm of possibility to find something. So is a thousand. So is tomorrow... we have no idea right now. I think we'll always keep looking as enough of us will realize that the chance of finding something may be very small, but it's zero if we don't look, or listen.

It took 358 years of improvements in technique to crack Fermat's Last "Theorem" but mathematicians persevered... we need that level of patience.


Completely agree... but humans have very short-term memories. Most, if not all, cannot think on long term scales beyond a single generation.

If the goal is to get more people interested by advertising all the possible signals, it will either turn into a huge fiasco of false positives and therefore turn people off the project or it will become a serious lack of patience issue.

While I think the project will end up doing something as has been suggested, I tend to disagree that it is a requirement to give this information to gain interest.

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The odds of a common cruncher finding anything are slim to none. The most promising areas of the sky are looked at in-house and the chaff is blown to the little people.

IMHO the odds of anyone finding a signal are slim. ET is a certainty but intelligent life with TV not so much. Earth has been around 4 billion years and it has only been 160 years that we even knew there were radio waves. The waves we generate can be blocked by a building or a hill. I read about ET wanting to be found and generating a very powerful signal. Why would they do that? It would cost money with no return on investment and could even be dangerous if the Klingons knew they were there.

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It would have been fun to see some "results" of what we're doing here. Absolutely.

We're trying to find ET's and I'm sure that if we find any we'll be the 1st to know. ;-)

Cheers.

If SETI@home follows the SETI guidelines for announcing a confirmed signal we would among the last to know IIRC.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

The most promising areas of the sky are looked at in-house and the chaff is blown to the little people.

That's a big, bold statement. Can you substantiate it?

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That's a big, bold statement. Can you substantiate it?

The SETI@Home receiver at Arecibo is also the receiver used by the SERENDIP project which does real-time analysis of basically the same area of the radio spectrum... it does "shallow and wide" and we do "deep and narrow". So anything SERENDIP found would be known immediately on receiving the signal, whereas our findings wouldn't be known for weeks/months.

Wouldn't call it "chaff" though... lol. IIRC the frequencies we do the deep analysis on are considered the most promising.

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I guess my next question would be are they activley looking at the results coming in or are they storing them for future study? Given the increase in GPU cruching the new intel app I know results must be flooding in by the second. Curious how much is actually looked at or if they are days/months/years behind?

Actually, this and some other comments after it raise a second valid point. It will seem odd to the public if eventually it's announced that we received "the signal" 5 years ago and it took this long to process it, but it will seem even odder if they announce we received it 5 years ago and someone crunched it 4 years ago, and it then took 3 more years to get around to analyzing the results of the crunching.

(And that's not even figuring in the lengthy process of reobserving that part of the sky, sending the data around for peer review, etc.)

[edit]
The conspiracy nuts will have a field day if it takes any longer than a week to make an announcement after the signal is received. (Picture in your mind Judd Hirsch in Independence Day shouting "You knew! 1947!")

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

I don't think they would even go public (in a big way at least) with something that old. Anything interesting would require recent reobservation to confirm, first by the SAH team and then confirmation by different astronomers on different receivers to rule out near sources through parallax and equipment weirdness...

Which is why I stick to my estimate that there may be a hundred signals as good as the "WOW" buried in the SAH results over time. It's just that with the vast number of completed work, the criteria are so much stricter that WOW, being a one-off, would never have seen the light of day... anything even considered for manual observation in the biannual or so candidate checks has to have been reobserved broadcasting at least once.

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What I started off to say, before I distracted myself, was that while "the signal" could come in 100 years or tomorrow, we would all find it rather frustrating if it turned out it came and we crunched it 3 years ago and the lab didn't analyze the results right away.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

What I started off to say, before I distracted myself, was that while "the signal" could come in 100 years or tomorrow, we would all find it rather frustrating if it turned out it came and we crunched it 3 years ago and the lab didn't analyze the results right away.

Ah... noted and agreed. :^)

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What I started off to say, before I distracted myself, was that while "the signal" could come in 100 years or tomorrow, we would all find it rather frustrating if it turned out it came and we crunched it 3 years ago and the lab didn't analyze the results right away.

Not sure that I would be upset. Good science requires time, analysis, and re-verification of results. I'd be more concerned if it "only" took them a year to announce it. If it takes three years or ten, I'd merely be happy that they found a signal.