http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/ Eric Korpela's SETI@home Blog University of California GMT en-us http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/rss_image.gif http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/ http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=69041 http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=69041 After too many months of too much work and no spare time, the power is out, and now I have time to blog. Ah, the life of a scientist. We typically have more ideas than time. So for this blog entry, I'm making it quick. I'm just going to list 10 facts and let you figure out what it's about until I get to the end: [list] * The surface of the Earth is warming, primarily due to increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere prompted by human use of fossil fuels. * Natural gas is the least expensive means of generating gigawatts of electrical power. * Nuclear energy is the safest way to generate gigawatts of electrical power. * Last year, side effects from use of coal as a power source killed more people worldwide than terrorism. * You and bacterium [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syphilis]Treponema pallidum[/url] share a common ancestor. That ancestor lived more than 1.7 billion years ago. * The sounds emitted by the heartbeat of a human fetus can be detected at 7 weeks. * The sounds emitted . . . Fri, 17 Aug 2012 23:37:32 GMT http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=67603 http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=67603 A month or so ago it was the 18th anniversary of our glorious elopement to beautiful downtown Reno. Every year we try to take a few days to recuperate from our jobs at a hotel within a few hours drive. As always happens, on the 4th day of our trip, I was barely well enough to make the drive home, and I spent the next week in bed. I'm still coughing now and and tomorrow I'll be mentioning it to my doctor. I have a theory why it happens. Like many people, I am a stress junkie. Caffeine and adrenaline help me power through the work day. I just get more things done when I think the world will end if I don't get everything done. The stress keeps my immune system humming along. If I stop being stressed, I get sick. There's only one problem with this theory. It's total BS. Wrong. Bogus. And I know it. But part of my brain, somewhere away from my frontal lobe, keeps telling me its true. But my frontal lobe is telling me that I probably have a confirmation bias. Biases are very important to the sciences. That . . . Sat, 07 Apr 2012 22:50:46 GMT http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=67087 http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=67087 Hi! I'm Eric Korpela. You may know me from such blog posts as "[url=http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=42628]Ewoks live under my deck[/url]" and "[url=http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=53578]How Spock and Sylar are related[/url]." As part of my continuing series on what the heck scientists do, I'd like to talk about brains. You may ask, "What is it like in a scientist's brain?" Well, it's dark, it's moist, and it's as warm as Daytona in July.[url=http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/~korpela/rimshot.wav]*[/url]. Just like it is in yours. The real answer is that I can't really tell you what's going on inside anyone's head but mine. For example, I look at my wife and think, "Why is she carrying all the groceries? And how can I make her do that again next time?" I really have no clue. That's because I've only been me. The way my brain works now is pretty different from the way it worked when I was starting college, so I'm pretty sure that most of what I do is learned beha . . . Sun, 26 Feb 2012 20:57:40 GMT http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=66888 http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=66888 [i]Previously posted on the Huffington Post[/i] Hi! My name is Eric, and like a number of the bloggers in the new Huffington Post Science section, I'm a scientist. An astrophysicist, to be exact. Unlike [url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-smoot]many[/url] of [url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/saul-perlmutter[/url]them, I've never won a Nobel prize. Even if I [url=http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/]find ET[/url], someone else will get the prize. It doesn't bother me much. Not having a Nobel means I don't have to talk about big picture stuff or seem particularly wise. It also means I can put an equation in my post. Like all scientists, I like beer, football, and explosions. But we can talk about media stereotypes of scientists in a later blog. We can also explore issues from the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang_theory]Big Bang Theory[/url] to [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Bang_Theory][i]The Big Bang Theory[/i][/url]. And we'll talk about [url=http://kepler.nasa.gov/]life on other pla . . . Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:38:42 GMT http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=65468 http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=65468 Being curious about AI, I noticed that a chat bot named Cleverbot is being claimed to have passed the Turing Test, in that 59.3% of the people chatting with it judged it to be human. They also judged 63.3% of humans to be human as well. Being skeptical by nature, I didn't buy it. So I decided to put Cleverbot to the test by pitting it against Racter, a bit of artificial insanity from the early 1980s. Their discussion is below. I don't think either of them will be passing any tests. Things in bold were supplied by me rather than the programs in question. I'll let you judge the results for yourselves. [i]Hello, I'm Racter. You are?[/i] [b]Cleverbot[/b] [i]Hello, Cleverbot. I believe you're interviewing me. What would you like to know? Excuse me a minute while I attend to some business - I'll be right back. I'm back.[/i] No. I am a girl. How do I get a boy to like me? [i]Is it better to like or to dislike? There are many ways. How is it that you do get a boy to like you? Because t . . . Wed, 14 Sep 2011 04:18:51 GMT http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=63888 http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=63888 The news that the Allen Telescope Array has gone into "hibernation" due to lack of funds was broken by [url=http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=budget-crunch-mothballs-telescopes-2011-04-24]Scientific American[/url]. We've known that this was a possibility for quite a while, but are sorry to see it happen. Since there's an implied relationship between the SETI@home and the SETI Institute, I thought I would open a Q&A thread about this closure. [b]Q. How does this closure affect SETI@home?[/b] A. It really doesn't. While some of our projects (Fly's Eye experiment) have used the ATA, SETI@home doesn't use any data from ATA. We also don't currently receive any funding from the SETI Institute, and are not affected by their budget. [b]Q. Why has the ATA closed?[/b] A. The ATA has gone into hibernation due to lack of funding. ATA requires about $1.5M/yr for operations and an additional $1M/yr to support the SETI Institute's science programs. $2.5M/yr sounds like a lot, but the cost of o . . . Mon, 25 Apr 2011 22:44:19 GMT http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=60884 http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=60884 I going to try to get back to posting on occasion now that (fingers crossed) the most stressful parts of the summer have ended. Today's post will be a quick one. The last couple days I've seen a pair of California towhees (otherwise known as nondescript brown birds) eating seeds in the back yard. The larger of the pair was continuously peeping. Every once in a while the smaller of the pair would pick up a seed and feed it to the larger one. Since I'm unable to stop being a scientist even on the weekends, I came up with two hypotheses for what I was seeing. The first hyphothesis was that the larger bird was what Angela would call an "apron strings" chick that was hanging around its mother even after it was full grown. The other possibility was the this was a towhee that figured out that if it peeped like a chick, females would offer to feed it. I knew a lot of guys like that when I was in college. With the current internet there's no excuse for not knowing something. I did a really basic search a . . . Mon, 26 Jul 2010 22:32:46 GMT http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=56450 http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=56450 I've been getting a lot of questions and comments about the forced resignation of an IT administrator in the Higley School District in Arizona. There's a lot of misinformation flying around, mostly due to poor reporting. First lets start with the facts we know: NEZ (Brad Niesluchowski) was an IT administrator at Higley school district. He allegedly installed and ran BOINC and attached to the SETI@home project. The district alleges damages of $1.2M to $1.6M because of the use of SETI@home both due to wear and tear on the processors and electricity usage. Niesluchowski claims that the district administrator has a personal vendetta against him. [b]Category: Questions about SETI@home[/b] [i]Q. Do I need permission from my employer to run SETI@home on computers at work?[/i] A. Yes! Of course! [url=http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/info.php]We've been saying that for 10 years[/url], and despite what some bloggers have said, Niesluchowski wasn't the first person to lose his job over this. The first time . . . Fri, 04 Dec 2009 02:30:42 GMT http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=54922 http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=54922 Since my last blog posting successfully reignited the war of 1812, lets see if we can re-start another one. . . Thesis: The indie/alterna/punk band "Gossip" (formerly "The Gossip") lets us know what the late 70s would have sounded like if Dolly Parton hadn't wasted her considerable talents (vocal) on country music. Discuss amongst yourselves. Let the beatings begin! ;) . . . Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:19:18 GMT