SETI Search for ET Intensified

The SETI@Home project is not only the longest running search for radio signals from alien civilizations, but it also boasts the largest community of dedicated users of any Internet computing project. The premise is simple; instead of backlogging all the information gathered in the search for extraterrestrial life and hoping to get to it one day, distribute it out across the internet to hundreds of thousands of willing computer users.

That is the basic idea behind SETI@Home, which consists of 170,000 devotees on 320,000 computers. And now, they’re getting an upgrade.

As a result of new and improved receivers installed upon the world’s largest radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, 500 times more data is being generated for the project than before. Subsequently, SETI@Home has been upgraded to help deal with the uptick in data that needs to be filtered for signs of life out there.

"The next generation SETI@home is 500 times more powerful than anything anyone has done before," said project chief scientist Dan Werthimer. "That means we are 500 times more likely to find ET than with the original SETI@home."

According to project scientist Eric Korpela, the new data amounts to 300 gigabytes per day, or 100 terabytes (100,000 gigabytes) per year, about the amount of data stored in the U.S. Library of Congress. "That's why we need all the volunteers," he said. "Everyone has a chance to be part of the largest public participation science project in history."

The 1,000-foot diameter Arecibo dish, which fills a valley in Puerto Rico, is part of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center operated by Cornell University with funds from the National Science Foundation. And ever since 1992, Dan Werthimer and his team have piggybacked on radio astronomy observations at Arecibo to record and analyze any signals coming in from outer space.

The team’s incoming data originally overwhelmed them, which led to the SETI@Home project, allowing computers from across the planet to link up and essentially be used as one large supercomputer. But Arecibo has received an upgrade, consisting of seven new receivers. These new receivers allow the telescope to record radio signals from seven regions of space, rather than just the one.

As a result, the upgrades have also increased the chances of finding signals from intelligent extraterrestrials. "The multiple receivers help us weed out interference better and make us less susceptible to thinking that things terrestrial are extraterrestrial," Werthimer said.

And though we have been listening to the skies since the late 70’s, we’re still alone – as far as we can tell. "Earthlings are just getting started looking at the frequencies in the sky; we're looking only at the cosmically brightest sources, hoping we are scanning the right radio channels," he said. "The good news is, we're entering an era when we will be able to scan billions of channels. Arecibo is now optimized for this kind of search, so if there are signals out there, we or our volunteers will find them."

Posted by Josh Hill.

http://www.physorg.com/news118511732.html

Comments

[anoniumimus IX]

We're going farther still, eh?

[Daniel Appleton]

I tried the SETI@home program, the software downloaded well, but sending my findings back to them was next to impossible, & it would make my computer lock up or try to crash, so I opted out of it.
Still, I think it's a laudible idea, & a worthwhile effort.

I've heard about an otical SETI but I'm guessing that involves the use of larger telescopes & observatories.