In 1995, David Gedye proposed doing radio SETI using a virtual supercomputer composed of large numbers of Internet-connected computers, and he organized the SETI@home project to explore this idea. SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is a scientific area whose goal is to detect intelligent life outside Earth. One approach, known as radio SETI, uses radio telescopes to listen for narrow-bandwidth radio signals from space. Such signals are not known to occur naturally, so a detection would provide evidence of extraterrestrial technology.
Radio telescope signals consist primarily of noise (from celestial sources and the receiver’s electronics) and man-made signals such as TV stations, radar, and satellites. Modern radio SETI projects analyze the data digitally. More computing power enables searches to cover greater frequency ranges with more sensitivity. Radio SETI, therefore, has an insatiable appetite for computing power. Previous radio SETI projects have used special-purpose supercomputers, located at the telescope, to do the bulk of the data analysis. SETI@home was originally launched in May 1999.
Project owners + coordinators:
SETI@home project personnel
posted on Nov 26, 2008:
There’s one huge problem with SETI: It will only detect intelligent life from other planets if they’re transmitting radio signals.
Consider that human beings have been transmitting radio signals for little over a hundred years, but there has been intelligent life on Earth for many hundreds of thousands of years beforehand. SETI would be useless to discover such a planet.
In my opinion SETI is fundmentally flawed, and extremely unlikely to find anything, especially considering the time it takes signals to travel through the expanses of space. If SETI _did_ hear anything, it would most likely be from a source that has long since passed.
SETI may have reasonable funds and large-scale amateur support, but it’s essentially little more than an expensive gamble. I really don’t think it deserves the pride of place on this site that it has been given, especially when compared to some of the other content.
posted on Jan 07, 2009:
My view is that if you’re going to run software as a part of a grass roots supercomputing initiative, you should run something like folding@home instead. SETI is cool, but I honestly believe that protein folding is a more important task.
posted on Jan 07, 2009:
While at UF, I had setup SETI@Home for years on as many machines as I could get my hands on…all the way up to v3.08. When they released the new BOINC version, at the time it seemed to eat a bit too many resources, and shortly after downgraded.
Overall it’s a great concept, but I am conflicted about the ethics regarding the energy usage of machines that aren’t being used. Technically, if you’re not using the machine, it probably would be best for our electrical bills and carbon footprint to turn the computer off.
posted on Jan 07, 2009:
I used to run Seti@home all the time on a desktop, but now that all my machines are laptops, I find that these kind of cpu-intensive application are either draining my battery too much, or getting my machine way too hot and therefore noisy. I know you can turn down the amount of resources you can use, but that sort of defeats the purpose right?
Also, for some reason the old screensaver, with 2D gfx looked better/cooler/techier than the 3D thing you got going on now.
posted on Feb 21, 2010:
Love Seti,
Many hundreds of thousands of years?
More like 2 if you look for modern humans in the fossil record.
I accept it’s a very small chance of success, but that won’t matter if we keep doing it, the software will improve over time and more things can be added to look for.
I don’t run any seti stuff no more because Boinc kept crashing my machines, will the old setup’s still work?