Hey guys,

Seti@home noob here.

Is there anything we can infer from the completed work units?

For example the number and types of stars that were observed, can we now put error bars on the number of civilisations out there?

We haven't found anything yet :(

But just because we can't detect them using various methods in different
projects, it doesn't mean that they aren't out there waiting to be discovered.

I think most if not all participants in this project believe we can't be alone in
the universe so we will just keep on crunching the data till we find them.

john3760

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We haven't found anything yet

And from this result can we put limits on the number of communicating civilizations, maybe update the values in the Drake equation?

benguela,
Each work unit is about 107 seconds (I Think) of recorded radio noise, that's recorded with the worlds largest radio telescope, Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory

SETI@home has been sending these pieces of "radio noise" to peoples computers for 10 years now with no success. They have sent out over 2 billion work units and they have not detected aliens yet!

So what does that mean?

Its simply means that they have "listened" to another tiny part of the sky in a very narrow frequency range. But the sky is so infinitely large, and the range of frequencies is so broad, we have still only checked less that 1% of the sky. SETI@home only listens at one frequency, 1.42GHz. So aliens could well be "shouting" hello messages at us and we would never hear them.

The conclusion;
There is a better than average chance that aliens are out there. We just need to keep listening and keep trying. From the 10 years work SETI@home has done, we can only say that aliens are not blasting out any massive signals intentionally at us at 1.42GHz. But they could well be leaking out radio and TV signals that we have never listened for. There is still no upper or lower limit to the number of alien civilisations that could be out there!

Benguela your personal guess at the number of alien civilisations out there will be as good as any of the best SETI scientists in the world.

John.

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John,

So if we do an all-sky survey at that frequency or we do a fraction of the sky with a broad range of frequencies, could we then start putting limits?

Suppose seti@home in a thousand years time had scanned the entire sky at that frequency, several times, and found nothing, could we then fix the number of communicating civilisation limts?

Or are you saying that we can only assign limits once we have scanned the entire sky in all frequencies for infinity years, past and future, in which case the answer would be 0, excluding us of course ;)

John,

So if we do an all-sky survey at that frequency or we do a fraction of the sky with a broad range of frequencies, could we then start putting limits?

Suppose seti@home in a thousand years time had scanned the entire sky at that frequency, several times, and found nothing, could we then fix the number of communicating civilisation limts?

Or are you saying that we can only assign limits once we have scanned the entire sky in all frequencies for infinity years, past and future, in which case the answer would be 0, excluding us of course ;)

To put new limits to any probability theory you need to add more samples... Until now the only sample of intelligent life is us... So, the only way in wich SETI can help to Drake's equation is finding a conclusive proof of intelligent life.
Of course after scanning all the universe searching all the spectrum of comunications (I mean all, including subspace comunications, multidimensional signals, particle beams, mental waves, ;D ) during infinite years if we still found nothing... it will be only a conclusive proof that there is nobody out there broadcasting with enough power to reach us, but not that there is nobody out there, so still no changes to the limits... (Indeed, the only civilization we know is not boradcasting hughe signals, if they are as us we will never find each other...)

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Michael ,we are unfortunately not living in an ideal world.We are getting the data
from somebody else's telescope and have to use the data they give us.

You never know ,some kind billionaire may buy one for SETI@HOME's personal
use,but I think it's more probable that we actually discover aliens before that
happens ;)

In the meantime we will just have to crunch the data we are given and hope we
are lucky sometime.( and any point in the sky is just as good as another at this
moment in time)

john3760

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+1, LOL it is like buying a lottery ticket.

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