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ZL2VAL > SETI 20.03.03 13:57l 120 Lines 5111 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : DF0020ZL2VAL
Read: GUEST DB0FHN
Subj: SETI to focus on 150 stars
Path: DB0FHN<DB0RGB<OK0PPL<RZ6HXA<SP7MGD<7M3TJZ<ZL2TZE<ZL2TZE<ZL2WA<ZL2AB
Sent: 030320/0849Z @:ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC #:19601 [New Plymouth] FBB7.00g
From: ZL2VAL@ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC
To : SETI@WW
Scientists focus search for E.T. on 150 stars
Idle computers aid powerful radio telescope in Puerto Rico in the
search for extraterrestrial life
By Kelly Young
FLORIDA TODAY
Mar 18, 2003
When 4 million computers doze, they dream of aliens.
A group of scientists is visiting the giant Arecibo radio telescope in
Puerto Rico this week to take another stab at finding intelligent alien
life. They will look at the top 150 promising stars.
And they're going armed with data from 4 million computers from 226
countries around the world.
In 1999, SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,
established the SETI@home program, where people could sign up for a
screen saver that would analyze data from Arecibo Observatory and send
it back to SETI officials at the University of California at Berkeley.
When volunteers sign up for the screen saver, it asks them for their
name. Then the program retrieves a chunk of the sky to analyze from
previously recorded Arecibo data while the person's computer is idle.
Then it asks the user's permission to send the results back to SETI.
Another packet of data is then sent to the user's computer.
"You just keep doing that until you find E.T.," said Berkeley physicist
Dan Werthimer, SETI@home chief scientist.
The Arecibo telescope isn't just devoted to ferreting out
extraterrestrial radio signals. Astronomers use it for all kinds of
things. But SETI collects all radio data gathered at Arecibo, even the
stuff not directly related to their search. That's a lot of data, more
than most computers could process.
Werthimer said with that many computers working on the same task, they
are essentially the biggest computer on the planet.
This was the first type of distributed computing. The SETI@home team
had to solve problems like how to keep computer hackers from creating
false radio signals and how to process the data once it returned from
users' computers.
Other organizations have followed SETI's lead. Now, there are
screensavers that put computers to work on finding new drugs for cancer
or HIV or new climate models.
The star 55 Cancri will be among the 150 stars in the Milky Way galaxy
to be studied. In the past few years, astronomers have found
Jupiter-sized planets circling the star in about the same orbit as our
own Jupiter. Astronomers have suspected that in this configuration, the
star system might be capable of supporting an Earth-like planet.
Astronomers have found more than 100 planets outside our own solar
system.
While computers did the initial sorting down from 5 billion candidate
signals, five humans at Berkeley made the final cut.
In order to be picked for this list, the target had to actually be a
star. The group also looked at the strength of the radio frequency,
whether it repeated or if it was a frequency they'd seen before from
Earth-orbiting satellites.
In Puerto Rico, astronomers began observing the 150 targets on Tuesday
and will continue to search for radio signals that might come from
intelligent life on other planets through Thursday.
"Because we're not exactly sure where the signal may be coming from, we
scan over little parts of the sky," Werthimer said.
But would advanced alien life even use radio signals?
"I don't really know," Werthimer said. "We've only had radio 100 years.
If you'd have asked me 100 years ago, I would have said smoke signals.
We're also looking for laser signals. It's very hard to predict what an
advanced civilization would do."
Werthimer wasn't overly optimistic about the chances for finding such a
civilization this week.
"I'm optimistic that in the long run, earthlings are going to find
E.T., but I don't think it's going to happen (this) week," he said.
On the off chance it does happen, SETI researchers have a strict
protocol they must follow. They must verify their finding and have
other astronomers double-check their results. They would tell their
respective government and announce the finding to the United Nations
Secretary General and the International Astronomical Union. Following
the discovery, scientists are asked not to respond to the alien signal
immediately.
"I am quite confident, but only on an intuition, that we are not
alone," said Bruce Murray, Caltech professor emeritus and chairman of
the Planetary Society, the primary sponsor of SETI@home. "I do believe
that there's nothing about our star, there's nothing about our solar
system, there's nothing about our planets . . . that looks miraculous
or strange."
SETI@home uses screen savers on internet-connected computers to aid in
the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Visit:
setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu
=====================================
73 - Alan, ZL2VAL @ ZL2AB
Message timed: 20:42 on 2003-Mar-20
Whacky signs
~~~~~~~~~~~~
On the door of a Moscow hotel room:
If this is your first visit to the USSR, you are welcome to it.
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