Extraterrestrial Contact?

Brown · 13th March 2003, 11:16 AM

From ABC News:

Quote:

Using 4 million computers worldwide, scientists based at the University of California, Berkeley said on Wednesday that they have identified about 150 sources of possible signals from intelligent civilizations.

Before contact can be confirmed, however, the researchers plan to check out the signals with a radio telescope in Puerto Rico.

Quote:

The leading candidate signals compiled over more than three years of work are the ones that were particularly strong or have been observed in the same spot more than once, researchers said.

While scientists involved in the project are cautious about their chances of actually discovering a signal from an intelligent being in outer space this time, they believe they are on the right track for the future.

Anybody want to take bets on whether any of these signals will pan out?

Alaric · 13th March 2003, 11:48 AM

Ive heard that chances are they are nothing. SETI gets them, flails its recievere back and forth across the portion of sky they origionated from, and then discovers they are just enviromental or whatever.

It would be great though. BTW- remember SETI@home ? Apparently we all made a computer pumping out 5 terraflops or something of data. What an amazing idea that was.

Bluegill · 13th March 2003, 11:48 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Brown
Anybody want to take bets on whether any of these signals will pan out?

Bets, huh? I'd be willing to pay off ten-to-one (limit: $1,000 payoff) that none of the signals will pan out.

What's really nice about that, though, is that either way, I win! If I end up paying out the thousand dollars, I wouldn't care...I'd be too distracted by the coolness of it.

garys_2k · 13th March 2003, 12:51 PM

One of the signals will probably include old television images of Hitler and include plans for a trans-dimensional contact craft. All we need now is a good looking starlet to pilot it.

scotth · 13th March 2003, 01:26 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Alaric
Ive heard that chances are they are nothing. SETI gets them, flails its recievere back and forth across the portion of sky they origionated from, and then discovers they are just enviromental or whatever.

It would be great though. BTW- remember SETI@home ? Apparently we all made a computer pumping out 5 terraflops or something of data. What an amazing idea that was.

This is seti@home, same project.

BTW, the average for the last 24 hours was 53 teraflops. That is a measure of computational performance and not an amount of data.

A "flops" = floating point operation per second. A floating point operation is a non integer math calculation.

53 teraflops would be 53 trillion (53,000,000,000,000) calculations per second.

13th March 2003, 08:39 PM

Personally, I think that everyone using Seti@home should switch to Folding@home, a similar project which uses the massive computing power to solve some problems regarding protein folding. Protein folding is very important for creating new drugs, etc, and I think a far more valuable cause than looking for extraterestrial life which probably wouldn't send signals in our direction anyway. (And what if they did? We couldn't have a dialog with them, because of the distance.)

13th March 2003, 08:48 PM

Sounds cool, rwald. My router is a 450Mhz FreeBSD box sitting in a corner with an average CPU load of 0.00%. I might as well put it to work

Linkage?

edit- answered my own question. www.foldingathome.com should've known....

-Baggle

13th March 2003, 08:53 PM

Actually, as ironic as it seems, the link you posted is wrong. I was thinking of the Stanford project (link: http://folding.stanford.edu/). Of course, the two may be related, but I personally am not so sure.

13th March 2003, 09:01 PM

Ha. Should've known. Sneaky Canadian bastards.

In any case, the foldingathome.com program is what I'm going to be using since the one you linked to does not support FreeBSD and only that wannabe Linux.

Just remember this; FreeBSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for people who hate Microsoft

Actually, I know my way around UNIX, but I am no pro. I know enough to set up an install of FreeBSD to function as a router/etc without a graphical interface, but not much more than that. So, please, no questions about it in PMs, because I won't know much....

-Baggle

BillyJoe · 14th March 2003, 05:08 AM

Is Bluegill Stephen Hawking in disguise?

14th March 2003, 09:04 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by BillyJoe
Is Bluegill Stephen Hawking in disguise?

Don't think so- I can understand Bluegill.

Skeptical Greg · 14th March 2003, 09:35 AM

Everyone is welcome to join my Folding team..

DiogenesTeam

We are working on smallpox vaccines...

14th March 2003, 04:36 PM

BillyJoe, was that a reference to Hawking's famous bet about black holes? (For those who don't know what I'm talking about, Hawking, who created many of the theories about black holes, once bet a fellow scientist that black holes do not exist. His reasoning? "If black holes are proven to not exist, much of my work will be discredited, so this way, at least I'll get some money from it.")

BillyJoe · 15th March 2003, 08:23 AM

Yes.

gnome · 16th March 2003, 04:35 PM

Does JREF have a Seti@home team?

BillyJoe · 17th March 2003, 04:06 AM

No.

Always Free · 17th March 2003, 04:40 AM

I used to be all a quiver at the thought of making first contact but not anymore. I don't think it is a good idea to advertise where we are, who we are, how advanced we are.

As for Voyager, well it will probably end up destroyed by a meteor
or some space object, never to be found.

Did any of you guys see 'Independence Day'?? LOLOL!

Mr. Skinny · 17th March 2003, 05:10 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by gnome
Does JREF have a Seti@home team?

Look here gnome.

Bluegill · 17th March 2003, 06:00 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by BillyJoe
Is Bluegill Stephen Hawking in disguise?

Now I must change names again. I'm always giving away too much.

gnome · 17th March 2003, 10:12 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by rwald
Personally, I think that everyone using Seti@home should switch to Folding@home, a similar project which uses the massive computing power to solve some problems regarding protein folding. Protein folding is very important for creating new drugs, etc, and I think a far more valuable cause than looking for extraterestrial life which probably wouldn't send signals in our direction anyway. (And what if they did? We couldn't have a dialog with them, because of the distance.)

On the other hand, I believe the philosophical and scientific implications would be staggering. It's a super long shot... and the payoff is not in practical applications, but in knowledge. Particularly knowledge about ourselves. By studying another intelligent lifeform, we will learn a lot about what makes us human.

The folding project sounds terribly useful also, don't get me wrong. I think both projects are worthy.

PygmyPlaidGiraffe · 19th March 2003, 03:04 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Always Free
I used to be all a quiver at the thought of making first contact but not anymore. I don't think it is a good idea to advertise where we are, who we are, how advanced we are.

I wear a tin foil hat just in case mind-reading, space-faring ET life buzz this planet. Around that tin foil hat, I place a wet towel to interfere with signals that may be transmitted from any alien-implanted tracking devices placed there without my ken.

Where does the following come from?

The question is not whether or not you are paranoid, but whether or not you are paranoid enough.

I think Mel Gibson says something along those lines in the movie: Conspiracy Theory .

arcticpenguin · 2nd April 2003, 02:48 PM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/sc...00/2900637.stm

Surprise, surprise, none of the candidate signals panned out.

Always Free · 3rd April 2003, 02:56 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by PygmyPlaidGiraffe

I wear a tin foil hat just in case mind-reading, space-faring ET life buzz this planet. Around that tin foil hat, I place a wet towel to interfere with signals that may be transmitted from any alien-implanted tracking devices placed there without my ken.

Where does the following come from?

The question is not whether or not you are paranoid, but whether or not you are paranoid enough.

I think Mel Gibson says something along those lines in the movie: Conspiracy Theory .

Boy you are sure paranoid. Me too!! LOL! I'm gonna go and make one of those fancy tinfoil hats. You never know who is listening in

gnome · 3rd April 2003, 08:48 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by arcticpenguin
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/sc...00/2900637.stm

Surprise, surprise, none of the candidate signals panned out.

It isn't over yet... there were no obvious signs found, but the data has yet to be thoroughly processed. It is going to be farmed out to Seti@home users soon for the final analysis.

From http://www.planetary.org/stellarcoun...vations_7.html

Quote:

With 18 hours of observation behind them, the SETI@home team still hasn't found any clear sign of ET. The current evaluations, however, are based only rough analysis in real time. The final results from the observations will have to wait until all the recorded data is parsed out into work-units and sent out to personal computers around the world. Only after SETI@home users process the data on their machines and send it back to Berkeley, will the SETI@home crew have a real notion of the results of their quest.

Also bear in mind, the SETI@home project only scanned a fraction (I think about 1/5) of the sky. If, say, there are only a small handful of signals to be received, it wouldn't defy probability that all of them happened to be out of the search area.

http://www.planetary.org/stellarcountdown/sky_map.html
(in the image, the gray area is the searched area)

I believe they plan an even more comprehensive search for the next phase:

http://www.planetary.org/stellarcoun...vations_8.html

13th March 2003, 11:16 AM	#1
Brown Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Aug 2001 Posts: 12,984	Extraterrestrial Contact? From ABC News: Quote: Using 4 million computers worldwide, scientists based at the University of California, Berkeley said on Wednesday that they have identified about 150 sources of possible signals from intelligent civilizations. Before contact can be confirmed, however, the researchers plan to check out the signals with a radio telescope in Puerto Rico. Quote: The leading candidate signals compiled over more than three years of work are the ones that were particularly strong or have been observed in the same spot more than once, researchers said. While scientists involved in the project are cautious about their chances of actually discovering a signal from an intelligent being in outer space this time, they believe they are on the right track for the future. Anybody want to take bets on whether any of these signals will pan out?
	__________________ Klaatu: I'm impatient with stupidity. My people have learned to live without it. Mr. Harley: I'm afraid my people haven't. I am very sorry. I wish it were otherwise. -- The Day The Earth Stood Still, screenplay by Edmund H. North "Don't you get me wrong. I only want to know." -- Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar, lyrics by Tim Rice

13th March 2003, 11:48 AM	#2
Alaric Scholar Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 55	Ive heard that chances are they are nothing. SETI gets them, flails its recievere back and forth across the portion of sky they origionated from, and then discovers they are just enviromental or whatever. It would be great though. BTW- remember SETI@home ? Apparently we all made a computer pumping out 5 terraflops or something of data. What an amazing idea that was.
Alaric Scholar Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 55

13th March 2003, 11:48 AM	#3
Bluegill Graduate Poster Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 1,243	Re: Extraterrestrial Contact? Quote: Originally posted by Brown Anybody want to take bets on whether any of these signals will pan out? Bets, huh? I'd be willing to pay off ten-to-one (limit: $1,000 payoff) that none of the signals will pan out. What's really nice about that, though, is that either way, I win! If I end up paying out the thousand dollars, I wouldn't care...I'd be too distracted by the coolness of it.

13th March 2003, 12:51 PM	#4
garys_2k Muse Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 756	One of the signals will probably include old television images of Hitler and include plans for a trans-dimensional contact craft. All we need now is a good looking starlet to pilot it.
garys_2k Muse Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 756	__________________ - Gary

13th March 2003, 01:26 PM	#5
scotth Graduate Poster Join Date: Feb 2003 Posts: 1,800	Quote: Originally posted by Alaric Ive heard that chances are they are nothing. SETI gets them, flails its recievere back and forth across the portion of sky they origionated from, and then discovers they are just enviromental or whatever. It would be great though. BTW- remember SETI@home ? Apparently we all made a computer pumping out 5 terraflops or something of data. What an amazing idea that was. This is seti@home, same project. BTW, the average for the last 24 hours was 53 teraflops. That is a measure of computational performance and not an amount of data. A "flops" = floating point operation per second. A floating point operation is a non integer math calculation. 53 teraflops would be 53 trillion (53,000,000,000,000) calculations per second.
scotth Graduate Poster Join Date: Feb 2003 Posts: 1,800

13th March 2003, 08:39 PM	#6
rwald Guest Posts: n/a	Personally, I think that everyone using Seti@home should switch to Folding@home, a similar project which uses the massive computing power to solve some problems regarding protein folding. Protein folding is very important for creating new drugs, etc, and I think a far more valuable cause than looking for extraterestrial life which probably wouldn't send signals in our direction anyway. (And what if they did? We couldn't have a dialog with them, because of the distance.)
rwald Guest Posts: n/a

13th March 2003, 08:48 PM	#7
Baggle Guest Posts: n/a	Sounds cool, rwald. My router is a 450Mhz FreeBSD box sitting in a corner with an average CPU load of 0.00%. I might as well put it to work Linkage? edit- answered my own question. www.foldingathome.com should've known.... -Baggle
Baggle Guest Posts: n/a

13th March 2003, 08:53 PM	#8
rwald Guest Posts: n/a	Actually, as ironic as it seems, the link you posted is wrong. I was thinking of the Stanford project (link: http://folding.stanford.edu/). Of course, the two may be related, but I personally am not so sure.
rwald Guest Posts: n/a

13th March 2003, 09:01 PM	#9
Baggle Guest Posts: n/a	Ha. Should've known. Sneaky Canadian bastards. In any case, the foldingathome.com program is what I'm going to be using since the one you linked to does not support FreeBSD and only that wannabe Linux. Just remember this; FreeBSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for people who hate Microsoft Actually, I know my way around UNIX, but I am no pro. I know enough to set up an install of FreeBSD to function as a router/etc without a graphical interface, but not much more than that. So, please, no questions about it in PMs, because I won't know much.... -Baggle
Baggle Guest Posts: n/a

14th March 2003, 05:08 AM	#10
BillyJoe Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Aug 2001 Posts: 12,531	Is Bluegill Stephen Hawking in disguise?

14th March 2003, 09:04 AM	#11
Kiri Guest Posts: n/a	Quote: Originally posted by BillyJoe Is Bluegill Stephen Hawking in disguise? Don't think so- I can understand Bluegill.
Kiri Guest Posts: n/a

14th March 2003, 09:35 AM	#12
Skeptical Greg Agave Wine Connoisseur Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Just past ' Resume Speed ' . Posts: 19,024	Everyone is welcome to join my Folding team.. DiogenesTeam We are working on smallpox vaccines...
	__________________ Maybe later....

14th March 2003, 04:36 PM	#13
rwald Guest Posts: n/a	BillyJoe, was that a reference to Hawking's famous bet about black holes? (For those who don't know what I'm talking about, Hawking, who created many of the theories about black holes, once bet a fellow scientist that black holes do not exist. His reasoning? "If black holes are proven to not exist, much of my work will be discredited, so this way, at least I'll get some money from it.")
rwald Guest Posts: n/a

15th March 2003, 08:23 AM	#14
BillyJoe Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Aug 2001 Posts: 12,531	Yes.

16th March 2003, 04:35 PM	#15
gnome Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Aug 2001 Posts: 14,303	Does JREF have a Seti@home team?
	__________________

17th March 2003, 04:06 AM	#16
BillyJoe Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Aug 2001 Posts: 12,531	No.

17th March 2003, 04:40 AM	#17
Always Free Critical Thinker Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 406	I used to be all a quiver at the thought of making first contact but not anymore. I don't think it is a good idea to advertise where we are, who we are, how advanced we are. As for Voyager, well it will probably end up destroyed by a meteor or some space object, never to be found. Did any of you guys see 'Independence Day'?? LOLOL!
	__________________ "Stand Up For Your Freedom, Stand Up For Yourself"

17th March 2003, 05:10 AM	#18
Mr. Skinny Alien Cryogenic Engineer Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 7,843	Quote: Originally posted by gnome Does JREF have a Seti@home team? Look here gnome.
	__________________ U.S.L.S 1969-1975 "thanks skinny. And bite me. :-) - The Bad Astronomer, 11/15/02 on Paltalk "He's harmless in a rather dorky way." - Katana "Deities do not organize, they command." - Hokulele

17th March 2003, 06:00 AM	#19
Bluegill Graduate Poster Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 1,243	Quote: Originally posted by BillyJoe Is Bluegill Stephen Hawking in disguise? Now I must change names again. I'm always giving away too much.

17th March 2003, 10:12 AM	#20
gnome Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Aug 2001 Posts: 14,303	Quote: Originally posted by rwald Personally, I think that everyone using Seti@home should switch to Folding@home, a similar project which uses the massive computing power to solve some problems regarding protein folding. Protein folding is very important for creating new drugs, etc, and I think a far more valuable cause than looking for extraterestrial life which probably wouldn't send signals in our direction anyway. (And what if they did? We couldn't have a dialog with them, because of the distance.) On the other hand, I believe the philosophical and scientific implications would be staggering. It's a super long shot... and the payoff is not in practical applications, but in knowledge. Particularly knowledge about ourselves. By studying another intelligent lifeform, we will learn a lot about what makes us human. The folding project sounds terribly useful also, don't get me wrong. I think both projects are worthy.
	__________________

19th March 2003, 03:04 PM	#21
PygmyPlaidGiraffe Graduate Poster Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 1,253	Quote: Originally posted by Always Free I used to be all a quiver at the thought of making first contact but not anymore. I don't think it is a good idea to advertise where we are, who we are, how advanced we are. I wear a tin foil hat just in case mind-reading, space-faring ET life buzz this planet. Around that tin foil hat, I place a wet towel to interfere with signals that may be transmitted from any alien-implanted tracking devices placed there without my ken. Where does the following come from? The question is not whether or not you are paranoid, but whether or not you are paranoid enough. I think Mel Gibson says something along those lines in the movie: Conspiracy Theory .

2nd April 2003, 02:48 PM	#22
arcticpenguin Philosopher Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 5,687	http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/sc...00/2900637.stm Surprise, surprise, none of the candidate signals panned out.

3rd April 2003, 02:56 AM	#23
Always Free Critical Thinker Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 406	Quote: Originally posted by PygmyPlaidGiraffe I wear a tin foil hat just in case mind-reading, space-faring ET life buzz this planet. Around that tin foil hat, I place a wet towel to interfere with signals that may be transmitted from any alien-implanted tracking devices placed there without my ken. Where does the following come from? The question is not whether or not you are paranoid, but whether or not you are paranoid enough. I think Mel Gibson says something along those lines in the movie: Conspiracy Theory . Boy you are sure paranoid. Me too!! LOL! I'm gonna go and make one of those fancy tinfoil hats. You never know who is listening in
	__________________ "Stand Up For Your Freedom, Stand Up For Yourself"

3rd April 2003, 08:48 AM	#24
gnome Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Aug 2001 Posts: 14,303	The fat lady isn't signing! Quote: Originally posted by arcticpenguin http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/sc...00/2900637.stm Surprise, surprise, none of the candidate signals panned out. It isn't over yet... there were no obvious signs found, but the data has yet to be thoroughly processed. It is going to be farmed out to Seti@home users soon for the final analysis. From http://www.planetary.org/stellarcoun...vations_7.html Quote: With 18 hours of observation behind them, the SETI@home team still hasn't found any clear sign of ET. The current evaluations, however, are based only rough analysis in real time. The final results from the observations will have to wait until all the recorded data is parsed out into work-units and sent out to personal computers around the world. Only after SETI@home users process the data on their machines and send it back to Berkeley, will the SETI@home crew have a real notion of the results of their quest. Also bear in mind, the SETI@home project only scanned a fraction (I think about 1/5) of the sky. If, say, there are only a small handful of signals to be received, it wouldn't defy probability that all of them happened to be out of the search area. http://www.planetary.org/stellarcountdown/sky_map.html (in the image, the gray area is the searched area) I believe they plan an even more comprehensive search for the next phase: http://www.planetary.org/stellarcoun...vations_8.html
	__________________