SETI@home is a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can participate by running a free program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data.

It's a very good program, cool looking screen saver too.

SETI is dead!

Now, its called Project Phoenix.
Oh, and Area51 moved their stuff to another
underground facility.

Norman knows this firsthand since he's been down there and seen it.

Haven't you heard of the Biker's to Dreamland?
We did that! We got on our bikes and rode a couple of
miles from Las Vegas around to a specific mountain
where you can take pictures! Now, you'll get stopped
soon or later cuz they used to have security choppers
flying all over the place. But anyway.. If you stay there
long enough... Especially during the moving, you can see
some GREAT stuff! (in a distance)

Norman every single little thing you say is their completely absurd, or proven false. We've all long since stopped believing a word you say. Way to go.

Thanks for the link Ms. Kaia

It's okay Norman,

go to your happy place...deep breath...

I would recommend that we do a search for intelligent life on earth first before we get carried away...lets see what we come up with before commiting resources to what could be a pointless search...

Well, I don't agree with not committing a good deal of funds to searching elsewhere, not only in our solar system, but outside of that, as well.. I a huge supporter of searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence.



Reese

Knowing our luck, we'll find a civilization that has based itself around Monty Python... not that that's a bad thing of course.

Well, that would be odd... But, so would another Stewey...


I think it is very important to study these things, because after all, they do surround our world. We should do it in the hopes of finding anything, even the smallest form of life. Maybe not intelligent life, but finding even the smallest thing, could tell us huge amounts. I find it very important, on so many fronts.

Thanks for the link, I installed the program. Does anyone have the link for a similar program related to cancer? I can't remember the address.

Edit: nm- check here: http://www.iwoc.co.uk/cure.html

I might be a little late with this, but...

Mysterious signals from 1000 light years away
19:00 01 September 04
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition

In February 2003, astronomers involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) pointed the massive radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, at around 200 sections of the sky.

The same telescope had previously detected unexplained radio signals at least twice from each of these regions, and the astronomers were trying to reconfirm the findings. The team has now finished analysing the data, and all the signals seem to have disappeared. Except one, which has got stronger.

This radio signal, now seen on three separate occasions, is an enigma. It could be generated by a previously unknown astronomical phenomenon. Or it could be something much more mundane, maybe an artefact of the telescope itself.

But it also happens to be the best candidate yet for a contact by intelligent aliens in the nearly six-year history of the SETI@home project, which uses programs running as screensavers on millions of personal computers worldwide to sift through signals picked up by the Arecibo telescope.


Absorb and emit


“It’s the most interesting signal from SETI@home,” says Dan Werthimer, a radio astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) and the chief scientist for SETI@home. “We’re not jumping up and down, but we are continuing to observe it.”

Named SHGb02+14a, the signal has a frequency of about 1420 megahertz. This happens to be one of the main frequencies at which hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, readily absorbs and emits energy.

Some astronomers have argued that extraterrestrials trying to advertise their presence would be likely to transmit at this frequency, and SETI researchers conventionally scan this part of the radio spectrum.

SHGb02+14a seems to be coming from a point between the constellations Pisces and Aries, where there is no obvious star or planetary system within 1000 light years. And the transmission is very weak.

“We are looking for something that screams out ‘artificial’,” says UCB researcher Eric Korpela, who completed the analysis of the signal in April. “This just doesn’t do that, but it could be because it is distant.”


Unknown signature


The telescope has only observed the signal for about a minute in total, which is not long enough for astronomers to analyse it thoroughly. But, Korpela thinks it unlikely SHGb02+14a is the result of any obvious radio interference or noise, and it does not bear the signature of any known astronomical object.

That does not mean that only aliens could have produced it. “It may be a natural phenomenon of a previously undreamed-of kind like I stumbled over,” says Jocelyn Bell Burnell of the University of Bath, UK.

It was Bell Burnell who in 1967 noticed a pulsed radio signal which the research team at the time thought was from extraterrestrials but which turned out to be the first ever sighting of a pulsar.

There are other oddities. For instance, the signal’s frequency is drifting by between eight to 37 hertz per second. “The signal is moving rapidly in frequency and you would expect that to happen if you are looking at a transmitter on a planet that’s rotating very rapidly and where the civilisation is not correcting the transmission for the motion of the planet,” Korpela says.

This does not, however, convince Paul Horowitz, a Harvard University astronomer who looks for alien signals using optical telescopes. He points out that the SETI@home software corrects for any drift in frequency.


Fishy and puzzling


The fact that the signal continues to drift after this correction is “fishy”, he says. “If [the aliens] are so smart, they’ll adjust their signal for their planet’s motion.”

The relatively rapid drift of the signal is also puzzling for other reasons. A planet would have to be rotating nearly 40 times faster than Earth to have produced the observed drift; a transmitter on Earth would produce a signal with a drift of about 1.5 hertz per second.

What is more, if telescopes are observing a signal that is drifting in frequency, then each time they look for it they should most likely encounter it at a slightly different frequency. But in the case of SHGb02+14a, every observation has first been made at 1420 megahertz, before it starts drifting. “It just boggles my mind,” Korpela says.

The signal could be an artefact that, for some reason, always appears to be coming from the same point in the sky. The Arecibo telescope has a fixed dish reflector and scans the skies by changing the position of its receiver relative to the dish.

When the receiver reaches a certain position, it might just be able to reflect waves from the ground onto the dish and then back to itself, making it seem as if the signal was coming from space.

“Perhaps there is an object on the ground near the telescope emitting at about this frequency,” Korpela says. This could be confirmed by using a different telescope to listen for SHGb02+14a.


Possible fraud


There is also the possibility of fraud by someone hacking the SETI@home software to make it return evidence for an extraterrestrial transmission. However, SHGb02+14a was seen on two different occasions by different SETI@home users, and those calculations were confirmed by others.

Then the signal was seen a third time by the SETI@home researchers. The unusual characteristics of the signal also make it unlikely that someone is playing a prank, Korpela says. “As I can’t think of any way to make a signal like this, I can’t think of any way to fake it.”

David Anderson, director of SETI@home, remains sceptical but curious about the signal. ”It’s unlikely to be real but we will definitely be re-observing it.” Bell Burnell agrees that it is worth persisting with. “If they can see it four, five or six times it really begins to get exciting,” she says.

It is already exciting for IT engineers Oliver Voelker of Logpoint in Nuremberg, Germany and Nate Collins of Farin and Associates in Madison, Wisconsin, who found the signal.

Collins wonders how his bosses will react to company computers finding aliens. “I might have to explain a little further about just how much I was using [the computers],” he says.

Eugenie Samuel Reich

Here is the link: SETI finds signal of interest

And this article will also make you wonder:CONTACT! Canadian Crop Circle

First article was posted 9/4/2004, second article posted 9/4/2003... Conincidence?