EAC: Seti Search Team, week 2
Week 2 of the EAC Seti Search Team. Pardon me if I babble.
In the movie "Contact" Jodie Foster's character says, "I
think I need a bigger antenna." We have that bigger antenna,
now look at the horsepower being applied to the search.
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/stats/totals.html
Wow, I repeat, WOW, as I start writing this Thursday afternoon
the total stats show over 480,000 users! (494,000 Friday)
Over 5800 YEARS of CPU time! (almost 6200 Friday)
(Any one have a few million spare !!!!)
The stats can be very interesting. In addition to the team
stats to see how we are doing, you can look up your ISP
under domains. You can also check your standing in your ISP.
This is a world project, look at the country listings, US is
first, number 2 is UK, at 213 is Eritrea (1 user, 0 workunits).
I just checked Sri Lanka(#117), since Arthur C. Clarke's name
is at the top of the project SERENDIP letterhead. The top
person there has name and email blanked, could it be? If so
he's not using an HAL 9000, his average cpu time is 26hr, 33min.
Have you noticed that I'm excited? I said this would be fun.
I believe this is our first best chance to find life elsewhere
better chances will come, when search techniques improve, and
even more computer power can be called into play. I also think
that knowledge that we are not alone will have a positive effect
on many aspects of life on Earth.
Downsides:
"We don't even know if this haystack has a needle in it."
The life of an advanced civilization may be so short compared
to the age of the universe that there may only be a few at one
time.
Last I checked the totals there are over 500,000 users, I'm
sure many of them started the client and seeing how long it
takes, quit.
The webpage doesn't exist yet, sorry.
Performance tuning:
I haven't learned anything new, just set screen saver to blank
screen, it more than doubles your speed.
Clients:
This just in, a new Windows beta client is beginning test, I'll
be starting it in a few minutes. Can't say any more.
I'm dissapointed that the OS/2 client isn't released yet, hate
having to reboot twice a day, inorder to go online.
Other Approaches to Seti:
http://seti.ssl.berkeley.edu/
SERENDIP; (Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby
Developed Intelligent Populations)
Optical Seti; I haven't looked at this yet.
Southern SERENDIP; Search by Parkes observatory in Austrailia,
Areicibo only has view of about 1/3 of the sky.
AM-Seti; the current issue of 'Popular Electronics' has an article
on using an old satellite TV dish, a microwave scanner, and a PC
to search.
Til next week, I'll read all responces in this thread.
Charles R Ward #1479
Director, EAC Mision to New Worlds
As always, if you or any of your EAC team be abducted
the secretary will deny that the EAC exists.
EAC Seti Search Team, week 3
EAC Seti Search Team, week 3.
GO TEAM GO,
Go TEAM GO,
Cross The floor,
Out the door,
GO TEAM GO.
(got to work on some cheers)
(putting on striped red white and blue outfit)
I want YOU, for the EAC Seti Search Team.
(getting back into blue jeans and T-shirt)
For those of you that haven't joined, go to
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/cgi?cmd=team_lookup&name=EAC+Seti+Search+Team
click on and follow the instructions on
screen. If our non existent organization was a company
we would be about the middle of top 100 for large and medium
companies, a little lower if a small company.
I haven't figured out yet what I'm doing with these weekly
posts. Part cheer-leading, part recruitment, part performance
tuning, and part information about Seti.
This weeks quote from "Contact". While presenting her
project proposal.
Executive: We must confess that your proposal seems less like
science and more like science fiction.
Ellie Arroway: Science fiction. You're right, it's crazy. In
fact, it's even worse than that, it's nuts. You
wanna hear something really nutty? I heard of a
couple guys who wanna build something called an
airplane, you know you get people to go in, and
fly around like birds, it's ridiculous, right?
And what about breaking the sound barrier, or
rockets to the moon? Atomic energy, or a mission
to Mars? Science fiction, right? Look, all I'm
asking is for you to just have the tiniest bit of
vision. You know, to just sit back for one minute
and look at the big picture. To take a chance on
something that just might end up being the most
profoundly impactful moment for humanity, for the
history... of history.
I did a little exploring this week, from the Internet Movie
DataBase http://www.imdb.com to get the above quote. To the
Contact web page http://www.contact-themovie.com/ to read about
the Drake Equation (the link to a Drake Equation calculator is
busted). Then (not sure how I found this)
http://www.bigear.org/vol1no2/sagan.htm and this
http://www.bigear.org/ The Big Ear was a radio telescope at
Ohio State University, that for years did Seti full time. It
was torn down in 1998, according to other information to allow
expansion of a golf course.
I am not going to keep posting stats, they change so fast the
mind wobbles. Tuesday I checked the total stats several times,
we are adding users at about 700/hour, and CPU Years at 10/hour.
I just checked the distributed.net stats page and they claim
only 178,803 users. And their total stats don't even show a
blip from people switching projects.
The beta client I started testing last week runs fine, I'm
surprised its not released yet. During the test period they
were releasing clients faster than I could do work units.
I just downloaded the OS2 client, and will start running it on
the new machine, maybe I won't have to learn Linux after all.
Charles R Ward #1479
EAC Seti Search Team, week 4
The total stats took a couple of big jumps this week.
Tuesday and Wednesday each jumped about 800 CPU years.
I don't think I've used my alotment for WOW's, I'll
risk one more. Wow, zoomed right past the 10,000 year
mark. That number is why I've called this "The first
best chance" to find other intelligience's. Besides,
the phrase appeals to the optimist in me.
The More Power report.
We got a couple ofnew member this week with some serious
power behind them, knocking out units in about 9 hours.
They're at # 3 and 4 in our stats last I checked.
I've added some power here also. Like I've said I
figured this was a good reason (or excuse) to upgrade
so I bought a new system with AMD K6-2 450, and have
had all sorts of trouble. I figured it out, it runs
fine except doing Seti or RC5, when it crashes after
a few minutes. The processor overheats doing heavy
number crunching, I've under-clocked it to 427, it's
run now 48 hours.
In a previous article I said that I believe finding
other intelligences will improve life here on Earth.
My reasons for saying that seem so obvious to me, I
scarcely know how to start explaining them. I think
that finding others will combat most forms of bigotry
(the worst in us) that I am aware of. It won't do much
about religion, I expect many theists will follow the
lead of creationists, saying either: The scientists
are wrong; The scientists are lying; It's a trick by
the devil; or, It's a test of our faith by God. And
many will claim 3 out of 4 of those. Is there anything
I missed? On the otherhand, racism, sexism (and
genderism) and differences between religions will all
retreat before the knowledge that we are not alone.
If any one wants to expand on, or argue against, these
ideas it would probably be best to start a new thread.
In the past I've voiced some pessimism about the chance
of success. Above I labeled myself optimist, Polly-anna
would be a fair description. In the past I've said
this haystack we are searching may not have a needle in
it. But TUIAVBP, there is also a chance we may find
more than one needle.
I WILL get a web-page set-up tomorrow, it will be crude
but it WILL be there. Anyone with speed secrets, besides
MORE POWER, let me know. I've joined a mailing list for
users of the OS/2 client, not much there yet. A couple
of graphic front ends for the OS/2 command line client,
and people asking why we can't have the pretty screen
saver, that eats up a lot of cycles.
I haven't found any great Seti links this week, but
could spend a lot of time at http://www.bigear.org/
Especially in Cosmic Search Online.
Currently I'm reading "What if we Succeed?" at
http://www.bigear.org/vol1no1/sullivan.htm
Next week when I start my report early I'll keep
working on it til its done, rather than letting
it sit for a couple days, then rushing to finish
Friday night.
Sorry, no quotes from 'Contact' tonight.
Charles R Ward AA #1479
Director, EAC Mission to new Worlds
A.A. Seti Search Team, week5
Week 5 @ Deja.com
When DESCHAL ended, I along with several others on that
mailing list asked "What next", for me nothing could be
better than Seti@Home. As I meant to say in my first
post to the EAC Decrytion Squad thread, I considered RC5
just a warm-up. I did download the client for GIMPS
(Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search), but never
requested a block of numbers to test. I'm sure many
people started a work unit, then quit after seeing how
long it takes.
This week I'm mostly going to concentate on Seti on the
Web, all of these are from Yahoo news.
Yahoo News
Fox news on seti at home
There are lots more I didn't look at.
Boston Globe Online; health and science, Seti at home
Wired online, they are not impressed?
OK, I felt for a while that we were spinning our wheels,
but like they said on the website, splitting the data into
chunks is very proccessor intensive, and they didn't expect
so large of an interest.
Seti and distributed computing
This guy likes us. An excerpt from the page
begin quote
It may seem puzzling that public fascination with SETI@home
is so high, since SETI research traditionally has had money
problems. The congressional decision to end SETI funding in
1993, for instance, might seem to reflect a general distrust
of SETI. However, public interest in SETI@home makes sense
considering that the PC enthusiasts excited about SETI@home
are a very different demographic than grant-controlling
bureaucrats and politicians. Furthermore, the appeal of using
a resource currently wasted in an epic scientific quest is
much greater than grant-controllers interest in shoveling
limited funds into a program which has yet to produce much
beyond an enormous data backlog.
SETI@home hopes to eliminate this backlog--Big Science estimates
that it would only take 50,000 PCs to equal the computational
power available to all current SETI projects combined. SETI@home
would parcel out the stored tape data to client computers on the
Internet, sending a quarter-megabyte to each client every five
days. The client software would run as a "screensaver" which
would display the status of the SETI@home project around the world.
On the most basic level, SETI@home provides the capacity to
analyze SERENDIP data more finely than real-time processing,
in a much more cost-effective manner. This however does not
ensure that SETI@home will discover extraterrestrial
civilizations soon, or ever, for that matter. Beyond the task
at hand, SETI@home may lay the groundwork for a community of
computer volunteers and future projects in distributed
computing-from the analysis of seismic data for earthquake
research to work on the human genome project. According to
Gedye, exciting the world about a major volunteer science
project is ultimately as important as finding ETI.
end quotes
As this article said analyzing seismic data, or weather or
environmental modeling, I'm sure there are lots of scientists
watching this, dreaming of what they could do with this much POWER.
Is there anything you would like to see as a project like this?
And one more link,
Christian Science Monitor
Despite the name the Monitor appears to take reporting
seriously, have I been unfair to theists? Several group
names appear to have religious connections.
I've several other ideas fighting for room in my head,
its definately time for a house-cleaning/garage-sale.
Next weeks topic maybe TBOTWAWKI, see you then.
Charles R Ward A.A. # 1479
Director; EAC Mission to New Worlds
The web page now exists at
http://showcase.netins.net/web/myplace/eac.htm
'You be careful out there.'
coming soon
Tuesday June 30 7PM IPTV
Terror in Space
the collision with between Mir and the supply ship.
July 13 Nova
To the Moon
A.A. Seti Search Team, Special Edition 5
EAC Seti Search Team Special Edition
I just learned that Friday, July 30 at 8pET/5pPT, Drs. Anderson
and Werthimer will be on Yahoo Chat.
I won't be online at that time, but maybe some of you will.
You have to sign up for Yahoo Messenger. I had a heck of a
time doing that, I had to try about 6 userids before getting
one not already in use. My Yahoo Messenger id is kevader.
YAHOO CHAT
Dr. David P. Anderson and Dr. Dan Werthimer Discuss SETI@home
Dr. David P. Anderson, Project Director and Dr. Dan Werthimer,
Chief Scientist, of the SETI@Home project discuss their
perspectives regarding this exciting new approach to computing.
SETI@home is a scientific experiment that harnesses the power of
nearly a million Internet-connected computers in the Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Volunteers, using standard
Mac or PC computers, run a free program that downloads and
analyzes radio telescope data. The massive computing power
dedicated to the project far exceeds that of any single
supercomputer in existence. This Yahoo! Chat Event is being
hosted by the Yahoo! SETI Club on
Friday, July 30 at 8pET/5pPT.