SETI to Upgrade Software, Telescope 246
Professor_Quail writes "Space.com reports that SETI@home is planning to transfer it's operations from Arecibo to another telescope in Australia, where they say lies an increased chance of finding extra-terrestrials. The Australian telescope is more powerful, with a wider view of the sky; scientists are betting that this new telescope will also help find signs of 'shriveling' black holes."
Is that such a good idea? (Score:1, Interesting)
Then again, there seems to be some incentive to move to another continent just to look back into space, so they must know something I don't
"Shriveling" black holes (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:FYI: Parkes "stared" (pardon the pun) ... (Score:2, Interesting)
I visited Parkes earlier this year and believe me, they don't let you forget for a SECOND that The Dish was filmed there! "As Seen in The Dish" signs abound for miles around the place. Of course, the filming was probably the biggest thing to happen in Parkes since the moon landing itself...
Re:FYI: Parkes "stared" (pardon the pun) ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Dear Maude (Score:5, Interesting)
Graphicless client. Yes I'm aware there is a command line client, it is a main in the ass to get running and have STAY running for many people. I'd like a client I can load up as a service in WinNT or a deamon in Unix that will run without my futzing with it or having to do anything but have the damn thing load from init. I think there's a slew of other SETI@Home users who'd appriciate this as well.
Worker threads. Oh please oh please oh please in your next revision add worker threads. I really don't need the graphics run in one thread and work units processed in another. I've got a dual P3 system that is on 24/7. Half of its processing capacity is sitting idle since I don't run the S@H screen saver. The monitor is off whenever the system isn't in use so the screen saver isn't much use.
Those two are the most important for me really. I run a couple distributed computing clients at different times but I started with S@H and have a special place for it in my widdle heart. I'm in it for the search itself, not to just have a cool screen saver. I think there's plenty of others who wouldn't mind a built for speed version of your client.
As an aside, does anyone know if any of the S@H work units are recycled and fed into other projects like studying pulsars or radio emitting variable stars? I'm not too up on the format of S@H work units but I thought it'd be cool if astronomers studying any sort of celestial phenomenae in radio bands could recycle WUs for their own purposes, even if they don't have a big distributed cluster working on them.
Re:Parkes link (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps not, but the link from that to the Long Baseline Array [csiro.au] is quite interesting. There is a map [csiro.au] of the array of telescopes - the spread is huge!
Wouldn't this be a better use for telescope time? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are essentially no searches being carried out in the Southern hemisphere at the present after the Howard government in Australia chose to withdraw all funding back in 1996.
Maybe someone could look at an Asteroid@Home option as well?
Not actually Parkes (Score:2, Interesting)
Read [dvdverdict.com] a fairly accurate review of the movie.
Re:Wouldn't this be a better use for telescope tim (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that the discovery of an extraterrestial civilization would be an achievement on par with the proof of heliocentrism. Knowing that there are civilizations on other planets would have no immediate practical consequences (we wouldn't be able to travel to their planet and meet them), but the knowledge that we aren't the only civilized species would radically alter the way that we think about the world, especially in terms of theology and metaphysics.
What I, in my ignorance, consider to be a waste of resources is the development of new elements. This is something that has no practical value and no effect on our worldview. Creating new elements in particle accelerators must be very, very expensive, and the finished product only lasts for a short period of time. Even if they found that, somewhere down the line, element 315 is stable, it wouldn't matter because they're making these things one atom at a time. If element 315 had an atomic mass of 700, they'd have to produce something like 8x10^20 atoms just to get a gram of it. I vote that we take their grant money and use it to search for near-earth asteroids.
Steve
Multibeam reciever (Score:3, Interesting)
I wouldn't think this would be terribly useful. When you go up into the focus cabin, and realise the 13 recievers are separated by not more than about 40cm (the dish is 64 metres across) - ie, you are looking at an area of the sky about
Not to mention I really hate seeing such a useful instrument such as the multibeam receiver wasted on such a useless task as SETI, but they are probably (hopefully) only piggy backing on the electrons going to other experiments.
Re:The difference with SETI@home (Score:2, Interesting)
Slightly related offtopic... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:SETI can't work (Score:2, Interesting)
There are a lot of assumptions in what you are writing, that's fine. The difference between simple assumptions and science is that with science you do check them.
Maybe the aliens are indeed here? maybe they are observing us? maybe interstellar space travel is completely infeasible? maybe each and every civilisation that has even arisen in the galaxy has destroyed itself (we're not far from that ourselves)? Maybe aliens have conquered the whole galaxy and grown bored with it (now they're just having fun in some virtual world)?
There are so many things that may have happened or never happened that it is worth it to check our assumptions. Maybe you are right, but it does not cost much money to check. This is what SETI is all about.