How many of you:

have a boring screensaver?
have a pc doing nothing half the day(and possibly night)?
have heard of SETI?

If you use seti at home, or want a free screensaver that make your PC look like its working hard !!!

Please post in here... i will add some links and other info if people are interested...



BTW... I DO NOT advise you run this on you disco pc... I have not tested it, but as it runs in the background, i would not sugest it is run in a "Live" situation...

Yeah - had a look at the SETI cruncher when it first came out......got too many spikes, so I deleted it

Spikes??? What you mean??

If you mean you have run the seti screensaver, the saver will show spikes in the data... but that is normal.

I have my own SETI group.. though I think I'm the only one left in it now. LOL

Mind you I haven't run it for a while now.

No need to run SETI - the search is over, this forum is full of extra terrestrial intelligence

I used to run it on a couple of linux boxes I admined. Eventually stopped cos it ate all resources, heh.. Wasn't a problem when the company didn't have many customers..

this may sound abit stupid, but what is a SETI?! other than somethin you sit on!!


Dave

LOL

SETI is Search for ExTraterestrial Intelegence.

basically looking for ET phoning home !

Sourced:
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence At Home
Download a free program to participate in this scientific experiment, which uses internet-connected computers to search for extraterrestrial intelligence

SETI@home is a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Dr. David P. Anderson, Project Director. specializes in operating systems and distributed computing. He designed the SETI@home software and data architecture, and leads the BOINC project.

David Gedye founded the SETI@home project, and acted as its first Director from 1995 to 1997.

Goal: An initial two year life span has been extended to increase radio band coverage of the skies using domestic home computers to 'crunch' data collected via signal analysis code (screensaver).

The first message from ET will probably be an electromagnetic signal. Electromagnetic signals are waves that can travel through the empty space between the stars. All the light that we see is made from electromagnetic waves, and so are infra-red and ultraviolet light, microwaves, radio waves and X-rays.
Talking with microwaves

The best way to send a signal between the stars is by using microwaves. Microwaves are good for two reasons:

They pass through space well - so there is little chance of them getting absorbed or scattered by clouds of dust between the stars

Not many other things in the Universe emit microwave radiation - so there is less chance of a message being drowned out by other signals
Even so, the microwave range still contains a lot of frequencies to search over. Can we narrow down the search even further?

Guessing the code for contact

As it happens, two very common compounds - hydrogen gas and hydroxyl molecules (made from a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen) - emit microwaves at frequencies which lie quite close together. When these two compounds are added together they make water, the one substance that's essential for life. Water would be as important to ET as it is to us - so they may well choose to broadcast this signal frequency to make contact.

So, searching the skies for this frequency is a good place to start. Of course, if we don't find anything, we can look at other frequencies later.

The SETI programme

In 1960, a young astronomer called Frank Drake conducted the first search for signals from extraterrestrials. During the 70s, NASA began a systematic search of the sky. However, they had their funding cut not long after the project had begun.

The privately funded SETI institute was formed in 1984 to continue the search for ET. Their focus now is on targeting over a thousand Sun-like stars, looking for life.

The Drake Equation
In 1961, Frank Drake tried to calculate how many alien civilisations there could be in our galaxy. He wrote an equation - now known as the Drake equation - to estimate how many alien races in our own galaxy might be trying to contact us. His current guess is that there are around 10,000. But this is based on some large assumptions. Only more research will show us how many - if any - alien civilisations exist.

N = R * x f p x n e x f l x f i x f t x L

Where

N is the number of communicative civilizations.


This in the number of civilisations in our Galaxy, the Milky Way, whose radio emmissions are detectable.


R * is the rate of formation of suitable stars.

The rate of formations of stars with a sufficiently large zone around them in which the surface temperatures would allow the development of lifeforms and whose lifetime is sufficiently long so that they could then evolve into intelligent life. These, not surprisingly, tend to be like our own Sun, so are called Sun-like stars. This rate is approximatly 1 star per year.


f p the fraction of these stars with planets.

The fraction of Sun-like stars with planetary systems is not yet known precisely, but already around a dozen other planets have been found around such stars and so it is likely to be a minimum of 5%, probably nearer 10%. Lets say a probability of 1 in 10.


n e the number of suitable planets per planetary system.

These are those where the surface temperatures would allow liquid water to exist. This implies that it must be sufficiently large to be able to keep an atmosphere. For example both the Earth and the Moon are within the habitable zone of our Sun but the Moon has too little gravity to be able to keep an atmosphere so is lifeless. In our Solar System, Venus is too hot and Mars is now too cold but would have been warmer when active volcanoes gave it an atmosphere. Lets say a probability of 1.


f l the fraction of those planets where life develops.

Life may well not develop on all suitable planets, but there is no good reason to believe that it won't - it appeared here on Earth virtually as soon as conditions became suitable! Lets say a probability of 1.


f i the fraction of these where intelligent lifeforms evolve.

This is one of the major uncertainties! On Earth it took a further 3000 Million years before multicellular life appeared. This suggests that the transition from very simple lifeforms to more complex ones is not easy. So complex lifeforms capable of reason and the other attributes of intelligence could be quite rare. This is a real guess. Lets say a probability of 1 in 1000.


f t the fraction of these where technology develops.

Given that the planet has a benign period long enough to allow unhindered development this should be quite likely. Lets say a probability of 1 in 1.


L the "Lifetime" of communicating civilisations.

This estimate is a real problem. We have no idea how long our civilisation will last. Assuming that we learn how to protect our planet from stray asteroids or comets and can learn to live within the limitations of our Planet, we could survive for 100's of millions of years. So L could be very large.

What is the result?

Multiplying up the factors apart from L gives us the equation:-


N = L / 10,000

So you can see that the result depends critically on L. If we are conservative and give a lifetime of 100,000 years then we would expect perhaps 10 other civilisations to exist at the present time. But, optimistically, with a lifetime of 100,000,000 years, N could be 10,000.



Proof?
Excitable reports that the search for a radio signal from ET has paid off were dismissed as premature by astronomers involved in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (Seti).
The tantalising claim that a signal picked up by the Arecibo radio telescope three times for a total of less than a minute last year could be the best candidate yet for success in the six-year Seti@home project, in which a screensaver program on millions of home computers sifts through raw data, appeared in New Scientist magazine.

But Dan Wertheimer, the project's chief scientist and a radio astronomer at the University of Cailfornia, Berkeley, who was quoted by the magazine as saying "it's the most interesting signal from Seti@home", told BBC News Online: "It's all hype and noise. We have nothing that is unusual. It's all out of proportion."

The signal, named SHGbo2+14a, has a frequency of about 1420MHz, one of the main frequencies at which hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, absorbs and emits energy. Some scientists say aliens trying to introduce themselves would be likely to transmit at this frequency.

Computers running in the US and Germany detected the signal, which appears to be coming from between the constellations Pisces and Aries, where there is no obvious star or planetary system within 1,000 light years. It has a rapidly fluctuating frequency, which could occur if it was beamed out from a rapidly spinning planet or object, although a planet would have to be rotating nearly 40 times faster than Earth to produce the same drift.

A drifting signal would be expected to have a different frequency each time it was detected. Yet with every observation of SHGbo2+14a, the signal has started off with a frequency of 1420MHz before starting to drift - although this could be connected to the telescope.

Speaking from the Aricebo site in Puerto Rico, Dr Wertheimer added: "We have no candidates that we are particularly excited about." After analysing 50 trillion frequency bands, he added, it was not surprising that a signal like SHGbo2+14a should occur by chance.

o, rite now i understand, thanks for that

Dave

I ran it for a year or so but stopped when built new PC. Also came to the conclusion that I think we need to explore Alien life on Eart before we start looking upwards. Dont know about you guys but I see some very strange people every day.

There is a man who comes to my shop and he builds computers for this task.

i currently have him running a couple of 4 CPU 64bit AMD optron systems and a little farm of cheep pcs all netowrked up.....

i was suprised when i found out that this is all he does with them..... but didnt have the heart to tell him there are better things to do than crunch SETI units..

good luck to all those who do run seti and i hop you find somthing soon becuase im tired of waiting

Lol... Its all my pc does in the office! cos i'm never there!!! plus all three servers run it, my laptop runs it... er... oh yeah, and the workshop pc runs it !!

...and i think i have already met some aliens... I too get some weird people some to my workshop, and i meet all sorts on the road !




We are not alone... Just the aliens aint daft..... Would YOU come to this planet if you knew who was on this planet !!

He wouldn't ring me, I'm always engaged and I don't think they have ringback on thier exchange.

I run the distribued computing devices - cure for cancer cuncher. Its good cause I can disable it if im working on something & I want the pc all to myself. Its not too bad either - its for a good cause an all