What are we doing?

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Profile Bernard
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Message 1838484 - Posted: 29 Dec 2016, 9:40:52 UTC

Hi everybody and happy new year,

I have some questions about SETI project may be there are some links to answer but I did not find them:

What kind of radio signal are we processing, and why?
From where in the universe are we scanning the signals? Small portion, big portion, specific area?
Are we processing only Arecibo recordings or some else?
How many contributors so far?
If a coherent signal is found on a member computer will that member be notified?
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Message 1838516 - Posted: 29 Dec 2016, 14:07:58 UTC

A few answers...

We are processing data from the "water gap" frequency range.
We are looking for non-terrestrial, non-known-source signals that are sustained over a long period of time.
Older data is from Arecibo, newer data is from the Green Banks telescope. It is fairly easy to tell which source a task came from, all the GBT tasks start with the letters "BLC", while Arecibo data starts with two digits.
The Arecibo data is from a random location within the coverage of the telescope, while GBT data is more targeted on specific known objects.
How many contributors - well into the hundreds of thousands of people and upwards of a million computers.
No, you want directly be informed (initially). There are (at least) two reasons for this, first, every result is to be compered with other results from the same location & frequency, (see the "Nebula" thread for news on the first part of this second round). Second is that there is a UN(?) protocol to be followed concerning the release of such information, and it is a bit long winded, with many checks and counter checks along the road.
Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?
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Message 1838536 - Posted: 29 Dec 2016, 15:47:59 UTC - in response to Message 1838516.  

Thank you that's clear.
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Message boards : SETI@home Science : What are we doing?


 
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