Screen Saver - what are we looking for?

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Profile David Ranson
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Message 1557468 - Posted: 15 Aug 2014, 19:01:25 UTC

Does anyone know what a extraterrestrial signal will look like on the Seti@home screen saver.
Being a nerd, I watch them, then it dawned on me, don't know what I'm looking at, or for.
Please help, I want to know when to be excited............
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Message 1557472 - Posted: 15 Aug 2014, 19:04:27 UTC - in response to Message 1557468.  

Josef Segur gave this explanation in Message 1535565:

For the Atropulse displays, the left to right time encompasses only 1.31072 milliseconds centered on the "Telescope time:" shown above. There are actually 32768 power values in that time, but for graphics purposes that has to be subsampled since displays aren't 32K pixels wide. The back to front Dispersion has 16 slightly different values, which causes the apparent spiky presentation.

For SETI@home v7 displays, the full 107.374 second duration is shown on the back to front time scale, and is subsampled as needed. The horizontal frequency scale covers the full 9765.625 Hz. of the WU, and again may be subsampled for presentation.

Given the totally different dimensions, comparing displays from the different apps isn't really meaningful. Perhaps close observation of those displays might lead to recognition of something important, but it should be understood that not all the data analyzed is displayed. If a special version of Astropulse were built which actually displayed all data chunks for 5 seconds each, processing would take over 100 days. For SaH v7 which covers more data for each display a similarly modified app would only take 11.44 days to complete a task at angle range 0.42.
Joe


I have highlighted the most important bits explaining that watching the screen saver isn't really going to help you find much of anything.
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Message 1557474 - Posted: 15 Aug 2014, 19:12:10 UTC - in response to Message 1557472.  
Last modified: 15 Aug 2014, 19:12:50 UTC

Thanks for the answer Ozzfan, I can sleep now, and stop watching the screensaver, for hours on end.
I shall return to my other hobby, biting off chicken heads.................
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Message 1557476 - Posted: 15 Aug 2014, 19:18:01 UTC - in response to Message 1557474.  

Whoa there! Sounds like you're going off the rails on the crazy train!
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Message 1557480 - Posted: 15 Aug 2014, 19:22:01 UTC - in response to Message 1557476.  
Last modified: 15 Aug 2014, 19:27:03 UTC

must have the wrong oz [img]https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-pGMMYe2nlsI/UauEtD_bxdI/AAAAAAAAAOU/UHKgNXpuABM/w545-h673-no/122_1006_01_o%2Bozzy_osbourne%2Bprofile.jpg[/url]
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Message 1557483 - Posted: 15 Aug 2014, 19:24:18 UTC - in response to Message 1557480.  

I'll get the hang of posting soon.... I hope
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Message 1557485 - Posted: 15 Aug 2014, 19:29:01 UTC - in response to Message 1557483.  

Don't worry. I wouldn't go barking at the moon about it.
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Message 1557492 - Posted: 15 Aug 2014, 19:52:31 UTC

The old SETI Classic Screensaver explanation may also be of interest.

At the time SETI@home started, many graphics cards did not directly support OpenGL so a lot of CPU time was needed to do the screensaver displays. Thus, showing the graphics was counterproductive. Newer cards had full support for OpenGL so at least showing the graphics did not impact CPU processing much. But most recent cards also have support for OpenCL or CUDA so their GPUs can be used to process tasks. Thus, again it is most productive to avoid the screesaver.

OTOH, many new users have joined after seeing the graphics on an existing user's system. That may be the most important factor.
                                                                   Joe
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Message 1557500 - Posted: 15 Aug 2014, 20:16:51 UTC - in response to Message 1557492.  

OTOH, many new users have joined after seeing the graphics on an existing user's system. That may be the most important factor.


That would be the reason why I joined SETI@home back in 2002. I saw the SETI Classic screen saver on a co-worker's machine and loved it, and loved the idea of it. I rather miss having the screen saver in the optimized applications. :-)
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Message 1558156 - Posted: 17 Aug 2014, 12:22:13 UTC

The way I have my computers set up the screen saver still comes on. But on this one it flips screens rather rapidly so I can never watch what it is doing. I understand by now that the screen saver isn't really relaying any significant information to my eyes but it is still fun to watch from time to time even though I am still not sure what I expected to see if ET was phoning home.
Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.
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Message 1569191 - Posted: 8 Sep 2014, 15:29:37 UTC

I would like them to utilize multi monitor setups with their screen saver..:)
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Message 1569246 - Posted: 8 Sep 2014, 17:57:13 UTC - in response to Message 1569191.  

I would like them to utilize multi monitor setups with their screen saver..:)


Oooh hello! :) Welcome to the boards Znix :)
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Message 1572060 - Posted: 15 Sep 2014, 3:03:50 UTC - in response to Message 1569246.  

Thank You.
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Message boards : SETI@home Science : Screen Saver - what are we looking for?


 
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