I've been a participant of SETI@home since the very beginning. Back then, my PC at work typically took a day or two to crunch its way through the distributed data blocks. At the time, most data was gathered by the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico.
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| Green Bank, no longer sending data to home PCs. |
The reason for pulling the plug seems to be that SETI@home has been re-perceived as a 'first phase' project. This is news to me, as it has always been presented in the vein of mediaeval cathedral-building: those who started the work would never see the end result. But, I suppose even mediaeval masons and carpenters changed their methods over time.
Still, science, computing and funding change. It seems that SETI searches will go on, but that the project is reverting to a more centralised data analysis for the future.
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| My final two SETI@home work units, nearing completion. |
For sure, we have barely scratched the dust on the surface of SETI searches, especially when you spend a moment contemplating the tiny distance our own radio leakage has travelled since we started using that technology, a mere 120 years ago. Roughly, our earliest radio signals have washed over maybe 15,000 out of 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
1 comment:
Have been participating in the project at the end of the ninetees/start of this century. Had several computers crunching. But at a certain moment the software caused problems and I removed everything never looked at it again. I hope they can use the data. 73, Bas
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