I've been with SAH since 1999 (wow, I am dating myself!) and I think I am now a bit confused about how SAH compares/works with SETI in general since 20 years have passed, new SETI projects have been formed, new telescopes have been added, and other hardware and science has been created.

Over the past 20 years I have seen a few videos on the topic of SETI and most recently one by Seth Shostak who is EXTREMELY inspirational, educational, and passionate.

My question is, what part of the overall SETI pie does SAH contribute to? When I think of "SETI" I think of an overall, small community of scientists trying to find out if we are alone. Back in 1999 when SAH began, I thought that SAH was the big, single project that SETI scientists were investing in. Yet, I rarely (extremely rarely actually) hear the phrase SETI At Home and any mention of how SAH works. For 20 years I haven't heard a peep of SAH. Some side questions are: How does SAH utilize the Allen Array? How do other SETI projects leverage SAH?

Is SAH 5% of the SETI research? If so, what projects are part of the other 95% of SETI research? How can citizens become involved?

For example, the ATA website: https://www.seti.org/ata states:

During the period from September 1998 through March 2004, Project Phoenix observed for a total of 100 days at Arecibo. That’s only 5% of the available time. The Allen Telescope Array offers SETI scientists access to an instrument seven days a week, and permits the search of several different targets (primarily exoplanet systems) simultaneously. As a result, the Allen Telescope Array is speeding up SETI targeted searching by a factor of at least 100.

Ok...who is utilizing the ATA and who just sped up their search by a factor of 100?

I am hoping SAH is not some pet project that faded into obscurity after 2-3 years and is just still ticking along only to provide a tiny sliver of information to the overall SETI research. The https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/sah_about.php page that is in the Science tab of this website (I think it really should be in the Project tab because it's not too scientific as currently described) doesn't answer my questions above.

I'm not trying to sound pessimistic...just curious about SAH vs. SETI. Maybe my questions above are outlined somewhere on a webpage that I haven't seen yet...and maybe such a description should be duplicated on the SAH website somewhere.

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I see on ny sceensavers data coming not only from Arecibo, but also from Green Bank, the largest steerable telescope in the world. I look forward to see also data coming from Parkes and maybe from the Sardinia radio telescope in Italy.
Tullio

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When you saying SETI I think you mean the SETI Institute.
https://www.seti.org/articles/allen-telescope-array
As for seti@home . It started as an experiment to use Distributed Computing as a mean to "crunch big data".
First with data from radio telescopes searching for artifical radio waves from outer space.
But then starting BOINC to also crunch data from a lot more different scientific fields.

I suggest him to read the NASA Technosignatures article in the News section.
Tullio

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I suggest him to read the NASA Technosignatures article in the News section.
Tullio

Thanks! However, the article you seem to be directing to me (which is at https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.08681 ) is 70 pages long. I doubt I am going to read a 70 page PDF to try to find, what seemingly should be, a 2 paragraph answer to my question. I've scanned the PDF quickly and again, not a single mention of SETI At Home. :(

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Let me point you to https://seti.berkeley.edu/ to see where Seti@home fits into UC Berkeley's seti plans. Beyond that I can't say there is a body directing the various groups to look here or look there.

Many time the data which appear on my SETI@home screensavers have the label BreakthroughListen together with SETI@home. That is the initiative sponsored by Yuri Millner and other wealthy people which makes use of Green Bank, Parkes and the optical Lick project. There is evidently a relationship with SETI@home also because dr. Siemion, head of Berkeley SETI, is also connected with the SETI Institute. The SETI Institute is more known that SETI@home, but we have about 90000 active members, I don't know about them.
Tullio

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Thanks, Chris. I heard about Breakthrough Listen Project last Fall...but it does not seem to be a Distributed Computing project. In addition to SAH, are there other (newer/better?) SETI projects that I can join?

I'd still love to participate with SAH but if it's ending, I'd like to pour my resources into the next wave of Distributed Computing for SETI work.

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Thanks, Chris. I heard about Breakthrough Listen Project last Fall...but it does not seem to be a Distributed Computing project. In addition to SAH, are there other (newer/better?) SETI projects that I can join?

I'd still love to participate with SAH but if it's ending, I'd like to pour my resources into the next wave of Distributed Computing for SETI work.

All the tasks that you get that start with "blc" (and you have done a lot of them) are from the Breakthrough Listen Project. ;-)

Cheers.

All the tasks that you get that start with "blc" (and you have done a lot of them) are from the Breakthrough Listen Project. ;-)

Cheers.

Thanks for the tip!!!

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... (and you have done a lot of them) are from the Breakthrough Listen Project. ;-)

1)How do you know I've been doing a lot of blc work?
2)How do you know I've been doing a lot of work in general?

I see my RAC but I don't see any page that says "this particular computer did 719 work units, 525 of which are blc" for example.

I don't mind sharing my stats but I would love to know the URLs or clicks you are doing to see the stats you are seeing.

My profile page ( https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_user.php?userid=3530 ) just shows:

Total credit 201,802
Recent average credit 3,940.41
SETI@home classic workunits 49,920
SETI@home classic CPU time 338,985 hours

If I look at my list of computers, I see, for example, the below stats for my iMac:

Avg. credit Total credit BOINC version

1,798.44 19,672 7.2.42

The Tasks and Details hyperlinks don't seem to tell me how many blc work units I am doing for a particular computer.

Thanks!

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Ok, click on my name and then click on "View" beside Computers. Here you will see my 2 rigs (note that you won't see as many details as you get to see of your own for privacy reasons) and links to both the Details and Tasks associated with them (this is used by most of us to diagnose problems with other peoples computers when they are having them). ;-)

Cheers.

From this page you get your account info.
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/home.php
Press View "Computers on this account".
From this page you get your computers.
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_user.php?userid=3530
Then Press Tasks for computer 8667189 for example.
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/results.php?hostid=8667189
Then press Workunit 3344845526
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/workunit.php?wuid=3344845526
You will then get the WU-name blc21_2bit_guppi_58406_31368_HIP21036_0116.10831.0.21.44.158.vlar

From this page you get your account info.
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/home.php
Press View "Computers on this account".
From this page you get your computers.
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_user.php?userid=3530
Then Press Tasks for computer 8667189 for example.
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/results.php?hostid=8667189
Then press Workunit 3344845526
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/workunit.php?wuid=3344845526
You will then get the WU-name blc21_2bit_guppi_58406_31368_HIP21036_0116.10831.0.21.44.158.vlar

Ok...I see it...other WUs I click on do not have the "blc" in the beginning so I must be getting some non-blc too (which is fine).

But I guess the remaining question is still for Chris: Chris stated "All the tasks that you get that start with "blc" (and you have done a lot of them)..." Is Chris stating I did a lot of blc work or a lot of work in general? If he is stating I did a lot of blc work, how does he know? I can't imagine he clicked through my thousands of work units looking for "blc". :)

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Chris deplores the fact that only 5% of registered users are active users, but that amounts to 90000 people spending time, money and electricity to look for a signal whose chances are minimal. I am taking place also in other searches. The Higgs boson was conceived in 1964 and detected at CERN in 2012. The gravitational waves were conceived by Einstein in 1915 and detected by LIGO and VIRGO in 2015.
What motivates SETI users? A book was written before the detection of GW to explain why people search for waves so feeble that Einstein himself declared they would never be detected.
Tullio

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Chris deplores the fact that only 5% of registered users are active users, but that amounts to 90000 people spending time, money and electricity to look for a signal whose chances are minimal. I am taking place also in other searches. The Higgs boson was conceived in 1964 and detected at CERN in 2012. The gravitational waves were conceived by Einstein in 1915 and detected by LIGO and VIRGO in 2015.
What motivates SETI users? A book was written before the detection of GW to explain why people search for waves so feeble that Einstein himself declared they would never be detected.
Tullio

And until CreditScrew and the way SETI handles computers with GPU's here is fixed when running stock then trend downwards in participation will continue only until it's only us diehards left.

Cheers.

Even though my statistics show I have only been participating since 2010 I have actually been a member since 1999 when the whole thing started. In 2010 I moved and had to rejoin. I never figured out how to merge my accounts so approximately 10 years of my contribution to the project are missing. Getting credit for that isn't high on my priority list so it doesn't worry me. In 1999 I really thought that it would only take a couple of years to find E.T. Since then the reality of the nature of the search has set in, but as long as seti@home stays active I will participate.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

What worries me most is that from what I understand--if we actually had results we would not know it.

I continue to crunch even though i have to stop to get my printing done expeditiously or my spread sheets to load.

I keep enough RAC so that I can post my crackpot theories on the boards and converse with other kindred souls.

I actually believe that a small, inexpensive group of GPUs attached to the antenna could Vet the data in real time or nearly real time and discard most of it--The GPU's may even be fast enough with enough horsepower to look inside for modulation and signs of intelligence in the signals received.



Though I admit rampant ignorance --I also believe that if all the people, equipment and money devoted to SETI were pooled and managed (perhaps at least at Berkley) then a truly proper job could be done--I still wouldn't expect any success in finding ET--but you never know. We would all like to feel that we are not just polishing turds as we see in so much sponsored research these days--funded by scientifically unsophisticated sources.

Yet another good rant by Daddio !!

But no, S@H is NOT shutting down it is continuing. As DA suggested, by using new and different dishes for the source of data.

Yes. The S@H front-end works pretty well and produces a lot of data.
But there are still a LOT of data to examine that have become a problem to the back-end Nebula.
Now DA consider another approach to tackle the problem.
There's considerable interest in using ML techniques, such as neural networks and cluster analysis, in SETI. Can we use ML in SETI@home, and in particular in Nebula?
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=83870#1978639
Interesting idea. AI has actually becoming "hot" in the IT world as a mean to handle "big data" in many fields.

First tell me what ML stands for; Machine Learning? If so, GPUGRID is teaching a neural network with thousands of Quantum Chemistry task. But they run only on Linux, so only about 100 users are running them, compared to about 1500 Windows users. I've suggested them to go the CERN way, that is using VirtualBox and a wboxwrapper which allows Windows users to run Linux tasks.
Tullio

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