What would we need to look for in the base frequency (if the base frequency is what we're looking at) which symbolizes a "strange" or "unknown" reading? I'm still a lil fuzzy on detecting what we're looking for, I'm pretty new to this whole thing. Can anybody help me out on this?

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SETI - What To Expect and other articles at The Planetary Society explain better than I can. If you google for 'wow signal' you will find more stuff as well.
The science board is probably a better place to ask this question than The Cafe, though.

PS : WELCOME TO SETI :)

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Need help? Check out the excellent Unofficial BOINC-Wiki!
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Yes indeedie! Welcome, Owner!

I can see you have an inquiring mind. I gave up a while ago, I just crunch and let the pros figure it out. ;)

If you learn anything interesting, post back and let me know, okay? heh

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Yes indeedie! Welcome, Owner!

I can see you have an inquiring mind. I gave up a while ago, I just crunch and let the pros figure it out. ;)

If you learn anything interesting, post back and let me know, okay? heh

I'm with Beets on this one. I set it up to crunch and I just let it crunch. lol

I will be keeping an eye on this thread to see if I can learn anything. LMAO

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Air Cold, the blade stops;
from silent stone,
Death is preordained

Calm Chaos Forums : Everyone Welcome

By the way Owner. If you get to the point you would like to join a team...Calm Chaos would be happy to have you join us. :-)

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Air Cold, the blade stops;
from silent stone,
Death is preordained

Calm Chaos Forums : Everyone Welcome

He he he, yeah, I forgot to put my name in my account, I changed it to JCY. But I think I understand it alot better now, they said the four things we are seeing here is;
spikes in power spectra,
Gaussian rises and falls in transmission power (possibly representing the telescope beam's main lobe passing over a radio source),
Triplets (3 power spikes in a row),
Pulsing signals that possibly represent a narrowband digital-style transmission.
I got this info from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seti%40home

I know it's hard to understand what these things mean to some (myself included), but I guess I can better explain it using what wikipedia.com has shown me.

power spectra - In physics, the signal is usually a wave, such as an electromagnetic wave, or an acoustic wave. The spectral density of the wave, when multiplied by an appropriate factor, will give the power carried by the wave, per unit frequency. This is then known as the power spectral density (PSD) or spectral power distribution (SPD) of the signal. The units of spectral power density are commonly expressed in watts per hertz (W/Hz) or watts per nanometer (W/nm) (for a measurement versus wavelength instead of frequency).

Although it is not necessary to assign physical dimensions to the signal or its argument, in the following discussion the terms used will assume that the signal varies in time.

Gaussian - a beam of electromagnetic radiation whose transverse electric field and intensity (irradiance) distributions are described by Gaussian functions. Many lasers emit beams with a Gaussian profile, in which case the laser is said to be operating on the fundamental transverse mode, or "TEM00 mode" of the laser's optical resonator. When refracted by a lens, a Gaussian beam is transformed into another Gaussian beam (characterized by a different set of parameters), which explains why it is a convenient, widespread model in laser optics.

The mathematical function that describes the Gaussian beam is a solution to the paraxial form of the Helmholtz equation. The solution, in the form of a Gaussian function, represents the complex amplitude of the electric field, which propagates along with the corresponding magnetic field as an electromagnetic wave in the beam.

Triplets - I believe this is referring to 3 power spectra spikes in a row

pulsing signals - A rapid, transient change in the amplitude of a signal from a baseline value to a higher or lower value, followed by a rapid return to the baseline value.
AND/OR
A rapid change in some characteristic of a signal, e.g., phase or frequency, from a baseline value to a higher or lower value, followed by a rapid return to the baseline value.

I'm guessing what we're seeing is a variety of waves and fields we're both creating ourselves and sending out AND at the same time reading natural waves and fields, in order to see "something" that recieves these created waves and replies to them OR something that happens to pass through these waves and fields alone, affecting them to a certain degree.

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Sounds good to me...lol

Basically, they are looking for any of those types of signal that repeats itself in a manner that is consistant with an " intelligent " source.

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Air Cold, the blade stops;
from silent stone,
Death is preordained

Calm Chaos Forums : Everyone Welcome

Heyas JCY!

Thanks for bringing us up to speed here!

Good job!

So, how're you enjoying crunching, so far?

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Actually, good thing you reminded me, cuz there was something I saw, I don't know if this is "specifically" what we're supposed to be looking for, but.....
my base frequency has been staying at around 1.420 GHz lately since Apr 11 to 15th 2006 (the 15th today as I speak). They said the last time they had an unknown signal was at 1.420 MHz, I think it was in 2003.......... I mean, does this mean anything, or is it just wishful thinking on my behalf?

Actually, good thing you reminded me, cuz there was something I saw, I don't know if this is "specifically" what we're supposed to be looking for, but.....
my base frequency has been staying at around 1.420 GHz lately since Apr 11 to 15th 2006 (the 15th today as I speak). They said the last time they had an unknown signal was at 1.420 MHz, I think it was in 2003.......... I mean, does this mean anything, or is it just wishful thinking on my behalf?

I'm no techie, but Yes!...that sounds interesting to me!

Why not start a thread in the Number Crunching forum called "Does this mean anything?" and just repeat what you have here. Those guys in NC are more technically inclined about Seti's operations.

Let me know the link if you start that thread. And drop by at the "Beethoven's VIII" thread, if you get a chance, we're a bit quiet in there this morning. Mike and Robert are both great guys. ;)

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Good morning you freaks o' nature!

Actually, good thing you reminded me, cuz there was something I saw, I don't know if this is "specifically" what we're supposed to be looking for, but.....
my base frequency has been staying at around 1.420 GHz lately since Apr 11 to 15th 2006 (the 15th today as I speak). They said the last time they had an unknown signal was at 1.420 MHz, I think it was in 2003.......... I mean, does this mean anything, or is it just wishful thinking on my behalf?

JCY... you will most likely see truckloads of such signals. What makes them "interesting" to setiathome is when a "reobservation" spots the same signal in the same part of the sky, at a later time and date.

S@h does a lot of statistical analysis of the results we crunchers turn out, to filter out terrestrial signals, satellites, etc. The 1.4 GHz frequency they study happens to be slap bang in the middle of the UHF band, widely used for television!

From that, you can deduce a lot of follow up observations have to be made to confirm any candidate signal.

If you want to hear what a pulse sounds like, detune a short wave radio late at night. You're bound to find several pulsed signals!

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Actually, good thing you reminded me, cuz there was something I saw, I don't know if this is "specifically" what we're supposed to be looking for, but.....
my base frequency has been staying at around 1.420 GHz lately since Apr 11 to 15th 2006 (the 15th today as I speak). They said the last time they had an unknown signal was at 1.420 MHz, I think it was in 2003.......... I mean, does this mean anything, or is it just wishful thinking on my behalf?

JCY... you will most likely see truckloads of such signals. What makes them "interesting" to setiathome is when a "reobservation" spots the same signal in the same part of the sky, at a later time and date.

S@h does a lot of statistical analysis of the results we crunchers turn out, to filter out terrestrial signals, satellites, etc. The 1.4 GHz frequency they study happens to be slap bang in the middle of the UHF band, widely used for television!

From that, you can deduce a lot of follow up observations have to be made to confirm any candidate signal.

If you want to hear what a pulse sounds like, detune a short wave radio late at night. You're bound to find several pulsed signals!

Hmmm. My shortwave radio is broken atm. But is that pulsed signal the one that sounds like 'tck. tck. tck.' about 2.5 times a second?

Have you heard those strange numerically coded channels? Presumably codes sent by intel agencies. Those are fun.

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Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

OK, cool, thanks man, now I believe I understand this much more better. I had no idea what that data on the far top right in measurements was referring to. Well, when I had a signal (previous to what you told me) of 1.420 GHz I always wrote it down when that signal looked strikingly similar to another, unaware if it was passing over the same area or not. Now that I know where to look at the dish alignment, I believe I'll be able to recognize a reoccuring signal if it passes over the same area.

I originally had an idea to set up my own dish (either constructing it from scratch or use one from a scrap yard), I wanted to find a way to be able to recieve the radio signals from stars and be able to hear their cosmic noise, to see the differentiation between them. I might set up a new thread on some pointers, but do you know of a program on the net that would allow a person to hear that cosmic noise already?

You're in good company JCY. I see that NASA conducted a cosmic noise receiver experiment, themselves.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1964-051A&ex=3

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Just remember Cosmic Noise is not sound. NASA was kind of doing what SETI@Home is doing. Just not looking at the frequencies that SAH does. It's looking at much higher frequencies for other purposes.

Well, what I was wanting to do is recieve some sort of sound transmission from stars, how is that possible?

Well, what I was wanting to do is recieve some sort of sound transmission from stars, how is that possible?

Maybe someone needs to invent some sort of scanner, much like the ones you can buy which find a channel that is playing some sort of voice, plays it briefly, then finds another, and keeps skipping to the next.

The idea being it is looking for your transmission from stars, constantly skipping to the next 'sound' that might be coming from an alien source. Just a pocket version of all the SETI dishes really;

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flaming balloons

Well, what I was wanting to do is recieve some sort of sound transmission from stars, how is that possible?

Maybe someone needs to invent some sort of scanner, much like the ones you can buy which find a channel that is playing some sort of voice, plays it briefly, then finds another, and keeps skipping to the next.

The idea being it is looking for your transmission from stars, constantly skipping to the next 'sound' that might be coming from an alien source. Just a pocket version of all the SETI dishes really;

That's so obvious I'm sure that that is part of various SETI programs.

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Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

I can TRY to invent this sort of star-noise scanner, but I won't be able to do it alone. I imagine there'll be an inscrutable amount of resources required here, and probably expensive resources at that (unless everything I use is from a scrap yard or old unused appliances). And atop of that, I think I might possibly be a tad bit ignorant on HOW to construct a thing of this stature. I mean, if I had a group of people to help me, I think the chances of its completion will look very positive, but I would need people who have experience in this kind of thing. I know for one, I would need a dish, a fairly large one, 2 or 3 work computers, a radio transmitter, audio frequency amplifiers, and a software program for all of this to work through. I would also need something that would keep certain waves from interferring with the ones I want to recieve. Is there anything else anybody could add to this list that makes this possible, or tell me how to assemble these things correctly, cuz I don't want to "accidentally" invent a type of EMF bomb or overpower an electric generator!