500-fold Increase in Data Flow from SETI Telescope 346
coondoggie brings us an article from Networkworld about a flood of new data for the SETI@home project. We discussed something similar a few months ago when a new telescope array went live. The vast amount of processing power required to handle the new data is prompting the SETI@home team to make a plea for more volunteers. Quoting the press release:
"What triggered the new flow of data was the addition of seven new receivers at Arecibo, which now let the telescope record radio signals from seven regions of the sky simultaneously instead of just one. With greater sensitivity and the ability to detect the polarization of the radio signals, plus 40 times more frequency coverage, Arecibo is set to survey the sky for new radio sources."
sounds like (Score:4, Informative)
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come on, people! (Score:5, Funny)
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All the evidence says that us being alone in the universe is next to impossible.
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I got the plea to rejoin the effort, and told them exactly the same, no way Jose till its fixed. No reply, as if I expected one.
--
Cheers, G
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Hey Nostradamus! (Score:2)
FoldingAtHome (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent is right. (Score:3)
The cancer and other medical projects your can donate your processing power to are far more important then a fruitless search for aliens.
Re:Parent is right. (Score:4, Funny)
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oh I dunno (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is silly. The goal of life is maximize overall satisfaction, not accomplish one single highest goal. It's important to rank your priorities, of course, both as an individual and as a society. But the notion that because A is "more important" than B implies ipso facto that A should get all the resources and B should get none is maximally silly.
Indeed, it's kind of OCD obsessive to always be focussed on pursuing the Top Goal, the kind of thing that when we see people doing it in practise -- giving up everything, including enough sleep and good nutrition, to, say, play World of Warcraft and become the biggest baddest player -- we conclude they need to do some growing up.
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I might also argue that protein folding is pointless since all you're doing is saving the life and therefore the DNA of an "inferior" person with a genetic disease. Why save them so they continue to pass on bad DNA? Why not let them
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Actually Copernicus said it first, and though he wasn't the first to say so he was the first to be scientific about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus [wikipedia.org]
Galileo (not Gallileo as the GP said) agreed but put it in a book that made fun of the wrong person (esentially making fun of the last Pope to expand church territory and calling him a simpleton)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair#The_Dialogue [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedi [wikipedia.org]
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After having upgraded to so so many more modern computers (I must have
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Now, clothing and shelter are important. They may not be important enough to justify all the resources that are poured into them, but they have use and value. Can you name a single benefit of SETI? Out of all the CPU cycles that have been thrown at radio signals, have any of them been of use? Folding@home has at least produc
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Benefit of SETI (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:oh I dunno (Score:5, Funny)
1) Breathe
2) Sleep
3) Procreate
4) Eat
1444) Find Cure for cancer
2137832) Find extra terrestrial intelligence
Ergo when I have some computing power to spare I'll devote some to the cure for cancer, when I have the United States's entire Internet worth of computing power, I'll spare a little to extra terrestrial intelligence
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Re:oh I dunno (Score:5, Interesting)
Finding this in the parent's post is left as an exercise for the reader.
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W
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And who knows, maybe the aliens *do* have the cure for cancer and by diverting cycles away from the 'search for aliens' w
Re:FoldingAtHome (Score:5, Insightful)
So what are you doing here, wasting your important CPU cycles?
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Exactly, you're a hypocrite.
Parent is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because you think you know what people should do, doesn't mean you do.
No, You're Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Did I say that people's spare CPU cycles should be mandated to SETI? As if that were feasible or even possible?
When I say that Protein Folding *should* take precedence over SETI, I'm simply making an appeal to people's personal priorities--and mine favor understanding and curing diseases over inconclusive alien signal-hunting every day of the week.
Yes, you're free to choose for yourself what cause you want to help out. As you should be. And I'm free to try to persuade others to help a very worthwhile cause:
http://folding.stanford.edu/ [stanford.edu]Re: (Score:2)
Personally I say "Go Folding!!" but I'm biased, I am at risk of inheriting (and have in my family) a currently uncurable and fatal deadly protein misfolding disease which has the potential to help be cured by that kind of research --- so for me there is even a sense of urgency in the matter.
Re:FoldingAtHome (Score:5, Insightful)
Find a protein, you change many lives for the better.
Find ET, and you change the course of the human race forever.
I will choose what to do with my extra CPU cycles myself, thank you very much. To me, ET is more interesting.
(Yes, I should know, it was my computer that discovered the candidate object for SETI@home back in 2004. Got on TV and weekly reader for that. What have YOU done with your spare CPU cycles?)
My only regret is BOINIC runs so crappy and is so hard to manage (come on, install a program that crashes upon resume, gotta dig out the right profile, gotta figure out how to sign up for projects = fail).
Re:FoldingAtHome (Score:4, Funny)
Congratulations! You accomplished nothing and yet managed to get on TV for it. You're right up there with Paris Hilton.
We're obviously each free to choose whatever project we want to donate our spare CPU cycles to (or none at all, if we so choose). Nonetheless, I would encourage people to support projects like Folding@Home over projects like SETI@home, mostly because even if we do discover the existence of ETI, the consequences are unpredictable; assuming they're not close enough to visit or communicate with in a reasonable timeframe, then the sole effect of the discovery would be to cause chaos amongst humanity (how many religions would go berserk apeshit if they discovered that Earth isn't God's special place after all? -- on the other hand, maybe a lot of religion would go away once people realize that We're Not Special, and that'd be a nice side benefit -- but still, very unpredictable).
It's also exceedingly unlikely that SETI will ever find an ETI, regardless of whether there are any ETIs out there. F@H, on the other hand, has already provided us with a lot of useful information about biology, and is clearly advancing the cause of science toward the specific goal of curing diseases. As a result it seems like a much better investment in MY long-term health for me to be spending my cycles on F@H.
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Yes, but spending your spare cycles on protein folding will actually accomplish something.
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Given the history of human civilizations discovering one another, it's pretty safe to say that each one of these interactions has resulted in disaster for the less advanced side. What makes you think the outcome would be any different if another civilization discovers us?
But, hypothetically speaking, let's say all of the sci-fi shows you watch are optimistically correct, and instead of inadvertently wiping us out, the ET's instead come in peace a
Re:FoldingAtHome (Score:4, Funny)
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Some poster mentioned it earlier: If you priorities is to spend youd budget on the best way to save lives then research into Cancer or AIDS isn't the best place to put it, even within the medical research field. There are other diseases that kill far more people but get far less research dollars than Cancer/AIDS already! The money goes into areas where the research companies think there will be t
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pointless until... (Score:2)
With the odds of finding a signal so low as it is, maybe the signal we find will already be the encoded protein folding solutions.
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You are spot on.
Besides, haven't we learned anything from Hollywood? If we alert the aliens to our presence they'll just come and make food and sport of us!
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Protein Folding should take precedence over pointless searches for noise-in-patterns.
Distributed computing isn't an either/or proposition. Right now the BOINC infrastructure hosts at least 42 projects, and at least three of those are health related (malariacontrol.net [malariacontrol.net], rosetta@home [bakerlab.org], predictor@home [scripps.edu]). When a volunteer starts BOINC and joins a project, they are presented with a list of many projects.
If SETI@home gets the 3 to 5 fold increase in volunteers that they hope for, it's a very good bet that every other BOINC based project will see significant increases in their volunteer base.
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I'm a big fan of divserity, myself. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if one day a cure for cancer ended up coming from seemingly un-related research. I'll grant you that SETI isn't likely to reveal the key. But, taken to the other extreme, putting all our eggs in one basket does not guarantee faster success.
Left seti when they went to bonic (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Left seti when they went to bonic (Score:5, Interesting)
Me too. Last time I used it the Linux install involved way too many steps. It is packaged as a 'generic' Linux binary, and left up to the individual to tweak it to fit their particular system. I am quite happy to contribute spare cpu cycles to the project, but at the moment I don't have the spare sys-admin cycles required to setup, configure and babysit the software.
If they want more people to install it, they need to do something like create a RPM installer and setup a yum repository. If the installation was as simple as 'yum install bonic' plus a simple Python configure script to set the project URL, then ReadHat could/would probably add it to Fedora. Which would mean that 1000's of people would see it listed in the install options, and some of them would probably give it a go.
The other reason I left was the change in the way that stat were reported. When I started, their website showed a headline figure of number of CPU years in the last 24hrs. To me, seeing that figure increase as the project gained more users was a real incentive to add machines and contribute more to the project. It gave you the warm fuzzy feeling that we were all contributing to what was at the time one of the largest computing projects in the world.
Now everything is listed as teams competing for 'credits', whatever they are. I didn't join to earn 'credits', I joined to participate in one of the largest collaborative computing projects in the world.
Re:Left seti when they went to bonic (Score:5, Informative)
gnarayan@munin|~> apt-cache search boinc
boinc-app-seti - SETI@home application for the BOINC client
boinc-client - core client for the BOINC distributed computing infrastructure
boinc-dev - development files to build applications for BOINC projects
boinc-manager - GUI to control and monitor the BOINC core client
kboincspy - monitoring utility for the BOINC client
kboincspy-dev - development files for KBoincSpy plugins
There are plenty of tools to convert debs to rpms
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Glad someone made an easy install for Ubuntu :-)
:-(
Not seen one for Fedora yet
Yep, I know that I can see the stats, or 'credits', for my account :
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YETI@Home (Score:5, Funny)
Arecibo Shutdown? (Score:3, Interesting)
To sum up what this increase in data will bring: (Score:5, Funny)
Six hours nineteen minutes right ascension, fourteen degrees twenty-three minutes declination
Six hours nineteen minutes right ascension, fourteen degrees twenty-three minutes declination
etc. ad infinitum
are the cycles really "spare" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes (Score:2)
The other posters are right; the halt instruction is executed by all modern browsers and OSs, and dramatically decreases CPU power use (as well as A/C required to move the heat out, much of the time).
Also, by the way, cycles (Hz) are never base 2 units, they're always base 10, so 2GHz is 2000000000Hz.
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I do believe I mentioned the fact that there are power saving things you can do.. but regardless, there are still a shitload of cycles wasted by having the idle thread run nops. It's just unavoidable, so why not run something useful in the idle thread?
Re:are the cycles really "spare" (Score:5, Informative)
Processors are also built to run at full load, as long as it holds a good steady temperature (say 50C) you might see its lifespan decreased from 30,000 hours to 20,000 hours. What they're not built for is constant temperature cycling between load and room (off) temperature. Turning your PC off at night will likely have the same affect on its lifespan as constant load does. Again, to me at least, it's worth it. I replace the CPU every 2-3 years anyway and have yet to see one KIA.
I do think, though, that Folding@Home is a better investment than SETI. Not that I'm not curious about finding life out there, but there are more important things to do here first.
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Whoah. Where do you buy your capuccino?
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If that's your attitude there will ALWAYS be a higher priority than SETI.
I expect these attitudes elsewhere but I'm saddened that the
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carbon footprint? (Score:5, Interesting)
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There should be a minimum performance required for these applications so people don't run old inefficient PCs 24/7 while achieving bugger all.
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1000000 * 400W * (3600s * 24 * 365.25) = 1.262304 × 10^16 joules (Watt-seconds) of energy
= 3,506,400,000 kWh
The conversion factor from kWh of mains electricity to kgCO2 is 0.43.
That gives you : 1,507,752,000 kgCO2.
My calculations may be wrong, but its a big number
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Nearly every computer we have in our labs is 100-200W. Don't believe what you read on the power supplies.
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1,000,000pcs each consuming 400W running 24/7 for a year would use :
:)
The conversion factor from kWh of mains electricity to kgCO2 is 0.43.
That gives you : 1,507,752,000 kgCO2.
My calculations may be wrong, but its a big number
But remember that that those million PCs are probably going to be on anyway, and the difference between idle and full power (but screen off) consumption is more like 40W, not 400W. So you've overestimated by at least a factor of 10, so it 150,000 metric tons of CO2 per year, or the amount emitted by 28,000 cars used in an average manner. It still sounds like a lot, but....
If every one of the 120 million households in the US replaced a single 60W incandescent bulb with a 15W compact fluorescent, it wo
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- Bring distributed computing to the public eye, open the eyes of many researchers it is a tool they can use for certain kinds of tasks. (Think folding@home would have gotten where they did without SETI@home paving the way?)
- Bring distributed computing to the cryptographer eye, so the KGB can use your grandmas infected Windows box to break NSA messages.
- Bring contributions and publicity to the SETI projects so when the selfish-assed Bush regime shut off funding it could survive.
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The search for extraterrestrial life has dramatic impacts on our own continued chances for survival as a species. As such, I'd say it's an inherently important problem [gmu.edu]. I'll take almost any amount of help to species-level survival over cancer drugs.
Note also that a null result is not the same as no results. Both a null result (failing to find ETI) and a positive result (finding it) convey useful information.
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Arecibo? I thought they were closing it? (Score:5, Interesting)
How wasteful is SETI? (Score:5, Insightful)
But how is contributing to a project that was the basis for mainstreamed distributed computing any more wasteful than blowing 9 hours a night on WoW? I'd love to see a breakdown of the increased energy usage from a high-end CPU and a good video card vs. a PC that's on anyway and running BOINC when it's idle.
Screaming "carbon footprint!!" about something as trivial as BOINC is the real waste. Here, I've swapped 80% of the lights in my house for CFL's, and I burned 10 bucks worth of electricity last month (with an electric heater and 4x computers in the house no less!) does make me green enough to spare some processor cycles now?
Fucking ignorant (Score:3, Insightful)
Of all the things in the world that monumental amounts of energy are 'wasted' on each day (powering bin Ladens dialysis machine,lighting the creationism museum,all the power used by all the dictators and oppressors of the world who shouldn't be allowed to LIVE let alone use resources), 'wasting' a few of them LOOKING FOR FUCKING EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE doesn't even come CLOSE to being classified as a 'waste'. FUCK! Am I at the wrong site?!!
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Besides, looking for ETI is important [gmu.edu], too.
I agree completely, though -- whatever happened to doing things because they're fucking COOL? Aren't we supposed to be nerds, here?
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Of all the things in the world that monumental amounts of energy are 'wasted' on each day (powering bin Ladens dialysis machine,lighting the creationism museum,all the power used by all the dictators and oppressors of the world who shouldn't be allowed to LIVE let alone use resources), 'wasting' a few of them LOOKING FOR FUCKING EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE doesn't even come CLOSE to being classified as a 'waste'. FUCK! Am I at the wrong site?!!
Um, yeah, it's a waste, because there's no extraterrestrial life to find. If all this number-crunching were actually resulting in real scientific discoveries that actually benefited mankind, then I don't care if it also leaves open the possibility of finding aliens, but if the whole thing is useless if no aliens are found, then the whole thing is useless, because aliens won't be found.
It always amazes me when the same people who make fun of Christians for believing in a God we can't see put just as much f
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because there's no extraterrestrial life to find
Care to explain how you reached that conclusion?
It always amazes me when the same people who make fun of Christians for believing in a God we can't see put just as much faith in their belief that extraterrestrial life must exist out there somewhere. At least we have the Bible; what the hell is your belief based on? UFO sightings? The historic account of Eric Cartman's anal probe as revealed in cartoon form?
Look, I poke fun at Christians because of stuff like this... No joke. Didn't your high school have some mandatory science [sciencebuddies.org] classes [rochester.edu]? BTW, I'm not quite sure which is more credible, the Bible or any given UFO reporting.
Faith is not a requirement to look for answers, and it doesn't obviate the need to either.
Not a waste of energy (Score:2)
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could not meet their demands (Score:2)
700% increase (Score:5, Funny)
What seems to be overlooked about SETI (Score:3, Insightful)
I would note that there is no fundamental reason for this axiomatic proposition, and it makes much more sense simply go with the data rather than stubbornly cling to a belief for which there is so far not a shred of evidence -- much as the creationists do with regard to geology and archaelogy, I would note.
Maybe sometimes some evidence will appear for ET life. That will be interesting, if so. In the meantime, we have a rapidly growing contrarian body of evidence, so we should accept as our tentative conclusion that we are, in fact, the only life in the universe.
Bad Arguments (Score:2)
Folding vs SETI isn't about weighing the importance of curing cancer versus finding aliens. It's an argument about using resources for a useful research tool versus using resources on a horribly inefficiently process which may not even be capable of finding what it's looking for.
You could use the investing money versus playing the lottery analogy, but it's really like comparing investing money versus digging through people's trash looking for a winning lott
Why no PS3 client? (Score:2)
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Aliens vs. Foldator (Score:3, Funny)
wow, really seems like 50/50 to me...
BOINC better be inobtrusive! (Score:3, Informative)
Come on, I want to install the client, configure the SETI task and settings ONCE, then forget about it completely and forever, let it run in background without reminding me of its existence, ever, period. I do NOT want my desktop cluttered by an extra tray icon. I've ditched it.
The old SETI screensaver did not display anything on the desktop while not running.
I hope people realise (Score:3, Insightful)
I hope that people realise that by covering 7 regions of the sky instead of one, and 40 times as much spectrum bandwidth as before, assuming that aliens are as likely to emit on any of these frequencies (which after all is not such a bad assumption considered we don't know a thing about them), statistically that will make us discover alien signals 280 times faster than before.
Very basically, that means that if we were say 1,000 years from finding an alien signal with the previous setup (which you can't say sounded so unlikely, I mean we barely listened for 40 years, and not always with the means we have now), we are now 3 years and a half away from that instead.
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Suggestion: Try out the SETI@home help forum [berkeley.edu]. If that doesn't work, email Eric Korpela, the SETI@home Project Scientist. I won't put his email address here, but a google search will reveal it. He's had the same email address for a very long time. He'll probably be able to give you a hand once you get past his challenge/response spam filter.
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I am over it now. Gone past the heavy drinking... the denial... all 12 or so steps.
I wish SETI the best, honestly I do, but without me this time.
(Oh I can hear the 'you are but a tiny spec in the cosmos' line now...)
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I agree with you about Prim