I signed up for this project (http://setilive.org) several days ago. Is anyone else participating in it? If so, I'd be interested to hear what you have to say about it.
SETILive
- Thread starter sevenstars
- Start date
i used to do something like that back in the dial-up days.. they would use your computers CPU to check data..
A
Amaris
Guest
It's interesting. I like being one of the eyes in the sky, searching for signs of life.
I take it this doesn't result in any appreciable slowdown in your computer's operations? (i.e. does it noticeably impact network performance or anything like that?)
A
Amaris
Guest
No, it doesn't work at all like the Seti@Home program. There's no installation of anything. All you do is sign up, and it keeps track of your views on it's server. How it works is like this:
*You register.
*You're given a quick tutorial on what to look for and what to ignore.
* You're then shown actual images from the SETI telescopes that are examining the Kepler system, as they're beamed in. If you see a radio image/noise that falls under the correct guidelines for examination, you mark it and the SETI team looks at it.
*Otherwise, you just continue browsing through the images until you come across something.
*You register.
*You're given a quick tutorial on what to look for and what to ignore.
* You're then shown actual images from the SETI telescopes that are examining the Kepler system, as they're beamed in. If you see a radio image/noise that falls under the correct guidelines for examination, you mark it and the SETI team looks at it.
*Otherwise, you just continue browsing through the images until you come across something.
Saturn0660 and sojourner, are you still doing Seti@home? I went and looked at that site-- it seems alive and well.
I was happily surprised that I could do SETILive on my very very slow connection, although it takes a bit of patience. I signed up for it after I saw it in the newspaper. I found the explanations and tutorials a little too brief and cryptic for someone like me, though they are improving them--
I'm afraid I've sent out a lot of junk, marking things that are way too small and don't have any actual cohesion. I spent a lot of time looking around on the talk pages, but the really helpful instructions were interspersed with a lot of stuff just too weird to read at 2:00 AM.
I was happily surprised that I could do SETILive on my very very slow connection, although it takes a bit of patience. I signed up for it after I saw it in the newspaper. I found the explanations and tutorials a little too brief and cryptic for someone like me, though they are improving them--
I'm afraid I've sent out a lot of junk, marking things that are way too small and don't have any actual cohesion. I spent a lot of time looking around on the talk pages, but the really helpful instructions were interspersed with a lot of stuff just too weird to read at 2:00 AM.
I just signed up. 
It seems like a neat way to for the scientist to get the menial part of their job done by other people for free.
But joking aside, a pretty neat way for anybody to make a small contribution in a joint effort in the search for life in outer space.
I don't think you've been marking junk retrogradeloop, there is a narrated 8 minutes long video tutorial [link] (aside the image tutorial [link]) that is rather informative on what to mark... anything that may even resemble a signal is a go.
Aside from that, from what I gathered so far, it works like this:
The horizontal axis is the frequency axis, going to higher from left to right, and the vertical axis on the image is the time axis (each image is for a particular patch of the sky). So, when there is a signal, at a certain frequency there will be a white dot that stands out of the noise, and regarding how it changes over time, it will draw a line across the image vertically. Sometimes due to the motion of the source there will be a Doppler shift, the frequency of the signal will appear to shift slightly to the left or right over time and thus a diagonal signal. A broken signal is pulsating on and off through time, the erratic one is the frequency shifts due to the tumbling of the source (a satellite... or maybe an alien vessel), etc...
It seems like a neat way to for the scientist to get the menial part of their job done by other people for free.
But joking aside, a pretty neat way for anybody to make a small contribution in a joint effort in the search for life in outer space.
I don't think you've been marking junk retrogradeloop, there is a narrated 8 minutes long video tutorial [link] (aside the image tutorial [link]) that is rather informative on what to mark... anything that may even resemble a signal is a go.
Aside from that, from what I gathered so far, it works like this:
The horizontal axis is the frequency axis, going to higher from left to right, and the vertical axis on the image is the time axis (each image is for a particular patch of the sky). So, when there is a signal, at a certain frequency there will be a white dot that stands out of the noise, and regarding how it changes over time, it will draw a line across the image vertically. Sometimes due to the motion of the source there will be a Doppler shift, the frequency of the signal will appear to shift slightly to the left or right over time and thus a diagonal signal. A broken signal is pulsating on and off through time, the erratic one is the frequency shifts due to the tumbling of the source (a satellite... or maybe an alien vessel), etc...
No not anymore. I'm not real sure why i stopped doing it.. Maybe i should resign up.. I'll have to check and see if my old user is still on file.
I just signed up.
It seems like a neat way to for the scientist to get the menial part of their job done by other people for free.
I know, huh? But the truth is, I'd be glad to make the coffee.
I read all the basic information when I signed up, but for someone like me it gets co-ordinated kind of gradually, as I re-read it, and look around for other things to help explain more. I watched the video as soon as I saw it come up on the blog-- it did help some, esp. with differentiating between a continuous and broken signal.
I guess what confused me the most was that in the original tutorial and signal gallery, the signals they showed were all BLAZING BRIGHT. But as soon as I looked at the talk page, people were talking about very faint signals, and looking only for a particular kind of signal, etc. There was some good information there, but it was a little hard to weed it out.
So I kind of swung the other way, and probably marked a lot of things that were way too short to be anything coherent. I still find it very hard to know if I'm actually seeing something, or just imagining what I'm looking for among the mishmosh.
I was wondering what Mr. Laser Beam asked above-- does Seti@home impact your computer's performance in any way?
Similar threads
