Russian entrepreneur launches $100 million search for aliens, backed by Stephen Hawking

A Russian entrepreneur has launched the biggest and most expensive search for alien life ever, backed by famous scientists including Stephen Hawking and Frank Drake.

Yuri Milner, who funds a range of science prizes, has launched a $100 million project called Breakthrough Listen that will give scientists some of the most promising chances to find human life in the universe.

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watch the announcement, starts around 10:39 into video stream

http://livestream.com/accounts/6714632/MilnerHawkingGlobalScienceInitiative/videos/93607230

Where does that leave Seti@Home?

It depends on activity and efforts of SETI@home staff to get into. To participate in this initiative and to make SETI@home established infrastructure part of it.

From the transcript:

“All the data will remain open,” Milner said. Internet users can
help analyze the data using Berkeley’s SETI@home software.

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Seti@Netherlands website

Watch the video at 25 minutes 08 seconds

I have to register my cynicism, in that to my knowledge no prior researchers were contacted with respect to the software aspect. Maybe they just decided to leave me out of the loop, but doesn't sound very open then. [Edit: I see the 4NFFT autocorrelation method I invented used, well the gloves will come off hawking, lol]

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

sieving the data as they receive it (1 hr 15 minutes into video)...does that mean a new machine??

From a quick look it seems like they want to setup the exact same thing as FIRSST. Or is this someone that is looking to fund the FIRSST initiative?

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

From a quick look it seems like they want to setup the exact same thing as FIRSST. Or is this someone that is looking to fund the FIRSST initiative?

I don't know either. seems like some other agenda (the people didn't convince me)

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

SETI@Home have put it on the front page here as a supported initiative.

Big boost for SETI@home from Yuri Milner's Breakthrough Listen Initiative
SETI@home and Berkeley SETI Research Center are proud to be participating in the new Breakthrough Listen initiative, that will dramatically expand the search for life beyond Earth. http://nyti.ms/1KfWuYF

Discussion thread in the News area

SETI@Home have put it on the front page here as a supported initiative.

Big boost for SETI@home from Yuri Milner's Breakthrough Listen Initiative
SETI@home and Berkeley SETI Research Center are proud to be participating in the new Breakthrough Listen initiative, that will dramatically expand the search for life beyond Earth. http://nyti.ms/1KfWuYF

Discussion thread in the News area

Awesome. Well I hope they inform me if any of my code or algorithms might be used. A Shame if not, maybe could save them some work (and earn some $$$).

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

Once cosmologist Alan Guth of MIT received a mail from Yuri Milner saying "You have been awarded a million US dollars". He almost fell from the chair. His bank account was 200 dollars.
Tullio

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Well, all we can do is hope we will get some more resources (money) invested in Seti@Home and we can get some consistency. This is great news though.

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I was most excited when I read about the team getting scope time. Money makes things happen, and I felt elated that they can now point the scope where they think ETI may be. I'm sure listening to the recent water worlds found would be a nice start. If our computer resources are allowed to help search this huge new influx of data, it will be amazing.

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We should all be even more excited to hear about efforts to actually process and analyze the data we have already crunched! You know, for the project to actually do some science on the data which we have collated. Clearly should be a GREAT place to start.

Suspiciously, I find no one here or elsewhere is even talking about that aspect of this new initiative. It would be wasted effort for anyone to try and reinvent the wheel when we already have most of the drivetrain here.


Money for more scope time is great, but how about knowing where best to point it? That information may be best gleaned from this massive database we continue adding results to, no?

By the same token, adding more results to a database no one (at the moment) seems interested in/or capable of processing leaves one wondering if we're approaching the definition of insanity.

Seems like if SETI@Home has collected information of value over the years, now is the time for it to be put to use and allow it to shine.
If not, be honest, call it what it is and let it go...

...In part the questions about the next stage of the process have been addressed in posts from Eric & Matt. The summary goes something like this:
The first idea was to use a real-time process known as "Nipicker" to correlate the results, but it failed, so there was an attempt at "Nitpicker2", but it failed mostly due to the size of the data to be handled and the lack of money to provide hardware and software to do it that way. Now there is another concept being developed, "slicing" the data into smaller segments and not doing the correlation in real-time. This is currently in the early stages of development, I don't think it has even hit "trial of a trial" stage.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Rob,

Did you watch the video where they were talking about sieving the data as they received it in order to decide what to keep and what to throw away?

That was why I posted the question about a new equipment further up in the thread. I knew they were having issues with "Nipicker" and was wondering if this was an attempt to correct this deficiency?

Zalster

My comment was in response to Banza156's not yours.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?