Seti@home
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Since it started in 1999, the Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), has become what can be only be described as a phenomenal success. To date in excess 5 million people world wide have downloaded the free program, from the SETI@home website, that will allow them to search for life in the cosmos. It all starts at the radio telescope at Arecibo, in Pueto Rico, which scans the skies for possible intelligent signals from distant galaxies. These signals are then sent to the University of Berkeley, in California. Here they are split into smaller chunks, these are then sent out to SETI@home users worldwide, to analyse and send back.
From the Seti@home website
On December 15, 2005,
after 6 years of operation, Classic SETI@home sent out its last
workunit. The current SETI@home project is up and running.
Please join us! The new software uses the BOINC distributed
computing platform, which enables your computer to work on other
scientific endeavors like SETI@home if you wish. We could all
use your CPU cycles! It's easy to switch over - just follow the
instructions on the new SETI@home web site. We hope to see
everyone there! ...the end of one adventure....
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To find out more about the WOW signal
The answer to that is YES
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The most famous signal in SETI history was detected on the night of August 15, 1977 at the Ohio State University Big Ear Observatory. As on every other night, while Big Ear was searching the skies for an alien signal, its observations were being recorded on a printout sheet. A long list of letters and numbers was continuously being churned out, one long string for every one of the fifty channels scanned by the telescope. A series of characters appeared recording an unusual transmission at the frequency of channel 2: "6EQUJ5" the list read. This startled Big Ear volunteer Jerry Ehman, a professor at Franklin University in Columbus, who was monitoring the readings that night. He circled the code for later reference and added a single comment in the margins" "Wow!" The signal entered SETI lore as the "Wow!" signal. |
The following article appeared in The Times on 2nd. September 2004.
Is there
anyone out there? ET hunters may have a clue
By Mark Henderson, Science Correspondent
AN UNEXPLAINED radio signal is the best candidate yet for “first
contact” by an intelligent alien civilisation, scientists have
suggested.
The enigmatic signal has been picked up three times since last year by
the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, making it the most exciting
result of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence programme (Seti).
It does not carry the signature of any known astronomical phenomenon,
and does not appear to be the result of natural interference or noise,
according to researchers who have studied its frequency pattern.
This means that it could have been transmitted deliberately by an
extra-terrestrial species on a distant planet, though experts cautioned
that this remains unlikely.
For the past six years, Seti has been hunting aliens using Seti@home, a
project that harnesses the power of millions of personal computers
around the world to sift through radio signals picked up by the Arecibo
telescope. Individual computers load a screensaver, which allows Seti@home
to use their processing power when they are idle.
The new signal, which originates from the region of space between the
constellations Pisces and Aries, is the most tantalising to be analysed
with this powerful new tool, researchers told New Scientist magazine.
Dan Wertheimer, a radio astronomer from the University of California at
Berkeley and the project’s chief scientist, said: “We’re not jumping up
and down, but we are continuing to observe it.”
The signal, known as SHGb02+14a, was first detected by the Arecibo
telescope in February last year, along with several other strange radio
waves, during a survey of 200 sections of sky.
When all these were analysed in detail using Seti@home, most of them
disappeared, or were put down as the results of interference or natural
radio emissions from stars or other celestial objects.
SHGb02+14a, however, has remained, and has now been listened to on three
occasions adding up to about a minute. This is not long enough firmly to
establish its source, but its frequency of 1420 megahertz has interested
scientists, as it is a main frequency at which hydrogen, the most common
element in the Universe, absorbs and emits energy.
Many theorists of extraterrestrial intelligence have suggested that
aliens would be likely to transmit at this frequency, as the abundance
of hydrogen might prompt other civilisations to tune into it. But even
scientists who have tracked the signal are cautious about ascribing it
to extra-terrestrial life. It appears to be coming from a point in space
where there are no obvious stars or planets for 1,000 light years
around, and the transmission is very weak.
Eric Korpela of
Berkeley, who has analysed the signal, said: “We are looking for
something that screams out ‘artificial’. This doesn’t, but it could be
because it is distant.”
Interference with the Arecibo telescope could also make the signal look
like it is always coming from the same point. “Perhaps there is an
object on the ground near the telescope emitting at about this
frequency,” Dr Korpela said.
David Anderson, director of Seti@home, said: “It’s unlikely to be real,
but we will definitely be re-observing it.”
Jocelyn Bell Burnell, of the University of Bath, said that the signal
could be a previously unknown astronomical phenomenon, such as a pulsar
she detected in 1967. “It may be a natural phenomenon of a previously
undreamt-of kind like I stumbled over,” she said. In a separate study,
scientists at Rutgers University in New Jersey have calculated the best
means of sending a large message across light years of space.
Christopher Rose and Gregory Wright suggest in the journal Nature that
long distance radio transmissions require vast quantities of energy. It
would be more efficient, though slower, to write down a message and send
it to its destination in a spacecraft.
Humanity, indeed, has done something similar with the Pioneer
spacecraft, which is carrying a disc engraved with pictures of human
beings and a plan of the solar system as it heads into interstellar
space.
Woodruff Sullivan, of the University of Washington in Seattle, said the
research suggests that a message from an advanced alien civilisation
could already be lurking undetected in the solar system.
He said: “This scenario is reminiscent of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A
Space Odyssey, in which a monolith discovered on the Moon has been left
by extra-terrestrials. If archaeologists were to find such an object, it
would hardly be the first time that science fiction had become science
fact.”
Here's the links to the New Scientist article: Mysterious signals from 1000 light years away
and Gaussian Candidate SHGb02+14a
No sooner had that appeared, when this was published on the BBC Science & Nature news pages:
Astronomers
deny ET signal report
By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor
Astronomers
have moved swiftly to quell speculation they may have received a
deep-space radio signal from ET.
It was reported on the internet that the signal had been found using the
Seti@home screensaver that uses computer downtime to analyse sky data
from telescopes.
But researchers connected with the project told BBC News Online on
Thursday that no contact with extraterrestrials had been made.
"It's all hype and noise," said its chief scientist, Dr Dan Wertheimer.
"We have nothing that is unusual. It's all out of proportion."
And Dr Paul Horowitz, of Harvard University, who specialises in hunting
for possible alien contacts added: "It's not much of anything at all.
We're not investigating it further."
For six years, the Seti@home project has used a downloadable screensaver
on millions of computers around the world to sift through data for
anything unusual.
The data has been collected by radio telescopes scanning the sky for any
unusual signals from space.
At the moment, we have no candidates that we are particularly excited
about
It is believed that any extraterrestrial intelligence might want to send
radio messages across the cosmos to make contact with other
intelligences.
Over the years, Seti@home has detected many hundreds of thousands of
spurious signals and has used statistical techniques to identify them as
interference.
About 150 signals survived the process and were subjected to further
scrutiny but none passed the final test to be classed as a potential
signal from ET.
The "signal" that kicked off furious media excitement on Thursday is
called SHGb02+14a and was first detected by computers running Seti@home
software in Germany and the US.
It has a frequency of 1420 megahertz - one of the principal frequencies
of the most abundant element hydrogen.
Speaking to BBC News Online from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto
Rico, where he is preparing an observing run to follow up Seti@home
analysis, Dr Wertheimer said: "It's all hype. We don't have anything we
are excited about.
"At the moment, we have no candidates that we are particularly excited
about and the new 'signal' is not a priority."
He continued: "With Seti@home having analysed some 50 trillion frequency
bands, it is not surprising that a signal like this occurs purely due to
chance."
Dr Horowitz, who looks for alien signals using optical telescopes, told
BBC News Online that it was "not new and definitely not a signal".
So there we have it folks, looks like we're going to have to wait a
while longer for that signal.
Here is the latest article from The Planetary Society on SHGb02+14a:
Reports
of SETI@home Extraterrestrial Signal Highly Exaggerated
