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August 03, 2010
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Search for ET beefed up—with your help
Jan. 2, 2008
Courtesy University of California - Berkeley
and World Science staff
The longest-running search for radio signals from alien civilizations is getting a burst of new data from an upgraded telescope. The world's largest single-dish radio telescope, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is one of the largest centers for research in radio astronomy.
The huge "dish" is 1000 feet (305 meters) wide, 167 feet (51 meters) deep and covers about
20 acres (0.08 square km).
(Credit: NAIC Arecibo Observatory
That means dramatically improved search capabilities, project scientists say—but
the full benefits will be realized only with public participation. They’re are calling for
new volunteers for SETI@home, a project in which ordinary citizens donate unused time on their computers
to let the machines help comb through the search data.
“The next generation SETI@home is 500 times more powerful then anything anyone has done before,” said project chief scientist Dan
Werthimer. “That means we are 500 times more likely to find” alien life—if enough new volunteers join. Even if not, the upgrades still promise an improvement of at least about 100-fold, he said.
Since it launched eight years ago, the University of California, Berkeley-based SETI@home has signed up more than 5 million interested volunteers, according to project scientists. It boasts the largest community of dedicated users of any Internet computing project, they said: 170,000 devotees on 320,000 computers. This number of computers should rise by an additional million to handle the expanded data flow, Werthimer said.
SETI stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
Prospective volunteers are being asked to visit the SETI@home website
for information.
The increased amount of data is a result of new and more sensitive receivers and other improvements
to the world’s largest radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, said project leaders. The software used for the job, they added, has been has been upgraded to deal with the surge of
information.
According to project scientist Eric Korpela, the new data amounts to 300 gigabytes per
day; on a yearly basis that adds up to 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 wide Arecibo dish, which fills a valley in Puerto Rico, is part of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center operated by Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Since 1992,
Werthimer and his team have used radio observations at Arecibo to record signals from space and analyze them for patterns that could indicate they were transmitted by a civilization.
When the team’s incoming data overwhelmed its ability to analyze it, the scientists conceived a “distributed computing” project to harness many computers into one big supercomputer to do the analysis. Since SETI@home was launched, other distributed computing projects have arisen, from folding@home to predict the structures of organic molecules, to the newly-launched cosmology@home to model possible universes. Most share the SETI@home
platform.
“Until now, there has been enough computing power to go around,”
Werthimer said. What largely triggered the new flow of data was the addition of seven new receivers at Arecibo, which
let the telescope record signals from seven regions of the sky simultaneously instead of one, he added.
“The multiple receivers help us weed out interference better” and reduce the chance of mistaking earthly signals from alien ones, he said. No telltale signals from an intelligent civilization have yet been
identified.
“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,”
Werthimer 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.”
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The longest-running search for radio signals from alien civilizations is getting a burst of new data from an upgraded telescope. That will mean a massive improvement in search capabilities, project scientists say—but its full benefits will be realized only with public participation. The scientists are calling for more volunteers for SETI@home, a project in which ordinary citizens donate unused time on their computers so that the machines can help comb through the search data. “The next generation SETI@home is 500 times more powerful then anything anyone has done before,” said project chief scientist Dan Werthimer. “That means we are 500 times more likely to find” alien life—if enough new volunteers join. Even if not, the upgrades still promise an improvement of at least about 100-fold, he said. Since it launched eight years ago, the University of California, Berkeley-based SETI@home has signed up more than 5 million interested volunteers, according to project scientists. It boasts the largest community of dedicated users of any Internet computing project, they said: 170,000 devotees on 320,000 computers. This number of computers should rise by an additional million to handle the expanded data flow, Wertimer said. SETI stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. The increased amount of data is a result of new and more sensitive receivers on the world’s largest radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, and other improvements, said project leaders. The software used for the job, they added, has been has been upgraded to deal with the surge of measurements. 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 wide Arecibo dish, which fills a valley in Puerto Rico, is part of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center operated by Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Since 1992, Werthimer and his team have used radio observations at Arecibo to record signals from space and analyze them for patterns that could indicate they were transmitted by a civilization. When the team’s incoming data overwhelmed its ability to analyze it, the scientists conceived a “distributed computing” project to harness many computers into one big supercomputer to do the analysis. Since SETI@home was launched, other distributed computing projects have arisen, from folding@home to predict the structures of organic molecules, to the newly-launched cosmology@home to model possible universes. Most share the SETI@home hardware. “Until now, there has been enough computing power to go around,” Werthimer said. What largely triggered the new flow of data was the addition of seven new receivers at Arecibo, which now allow the telescope to record radio signals from seven regions of the sky simultaneously instead of one, he added. “The multiple receivers help us weed out interference better” and reduce the chance of mistaking earthly signals from alien ones, he said. No telltale signals from an intelligent civilization have yet been found. “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.”