Defunct SETI Project May Resume Search for E.T.
Defunct SETI Project May Resume Search for E.T.
Posted 08/15/2011 at 7:21am
| by Paul Lilly
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You might be familiar with SETI@home, a distributed computing project launched by the University of California, Berkeley over a decade ago in which you can help participate in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Some SETI@home users were bummed when the SETI Institute announced back in April of this year that the Allen Telescope Array was being forced into hibernation due to budget cuts and lack of funds. Thanks to hundreds of thousands of dollar in contributions, the search for alien life is set to resume in September.
According to Reuters, the $30 million radio telescope array will wake from hibernation next month thanks to more than $200,000 in donations the SETI Institute managed to raise from over 2,400 donors, with actress Jodie Foster and Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders among those who contributed to the project. Combined with an unspecified amount of expected funds from the U.S. Air Force, the project will continue to run at least through the end of the year.
It should be noted that SETI@home operates independently from the SETI Institute and doesn't receive any funding or data from the Mountain View facility, so it was never really affected in the first place, at least not directly. It was still a mental blow, however, and we suspect news of the ATA's awakening will be well received by SETI@home users.
Shameless plug time. For those of you intrigued by distributed computing but care not for alien lifeforms, check out Stanford's Folding@home project. Folding@home studies protein folding linked with diseases, such as Alzheimer's ALS, Parkinson's, and others. Learn more here and consider this an open invitation to join Team Maximum PC (Team 11108).
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aso chudi
January 15, 2012 at 2:31am
Pretty good post. I would like to thank you for sharing your thoughts and time into the stuff you post !
bolod
December 27, 2011 at 3:25am
I have to admit this is a great article, I have been looking around for some thing like this for a quite a while, I will be back for more, thanks.
bolod
December 26, 2011 at 5:49am
It took me several days to read it because I’d read it in snippets, leave to do something else, and then come back to it.
musafir
December 23, 2011 at 7:43am
I love to surf and my initial source for information is the blogs which have always helped me in my education. This blog is one of them.
Kinetic
August 15, 2011 at 6:20pm
Oh man, this takes me back... My friend used to have SETI going on all of his PCs back when he ran a server for klondyke internet out of his spare room. That was over a decade ago.
Holly Golightly
August 15, 2011 at 1:14pm
You do not need to run a $200,000 to $3,000,000 project to know that there is life outside this planet. Just look at the sky... You will see. Only the debunkers are the ignorant fools who think the Earth is flat and the Sun revolves around the Earth... Of course, they will never understand the concept of life outside of Earth. So much money and soo much computing power for finding out something most people already know about, and may have seen themselves. Just look up at the sky... Just like E.T. is doing in that picture.
Shalbatana
August 15, 2011 at 9:34am
I've been having a major gripe with SETI@home for over a year now. It's been my screen saver for over 7 years, and now I don't get any functionality out of it anymore because the server can't be contacted for over half of any given week due to maintenance.
It's annoying to say the least, but I'm beginning to think that my spare cpu cycles are being wasted again. Perhaps they'd be better employed somewhere else?
livebriand
August 15, 2011 at 11:50am
Honestly, I don't think there has been any proven benefit from Folding@Home. I don't bother with those things.
Arlips
August 15, 2011 at 6:58pm
Instead of talking out of your ass, try looking things up. It took less than a minute of searching to find results from folding@home:
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Papers
I think the biggest reason you never hear about major breakthroughs with FaH on the mainstream media is because most of them are very technical and can't easily be broken down to layman's terms and sound good on TV. I mean just try to read and understand most of what's linked above without a degree in molecular biology and tell me how far you get.
Holly Golightly
August 15, 2011 at 1:08pm
Same here. It just sucks away your computer's power... And then you are stuck with paying the slightly higher electric bill. For that, I might as well stick to using my power for games and video editing... Which is not often, hence a lower bill, better for the environment. These home foldings are a waste of time since you do not get any benefit in the long run... Just the scientists of those universities.
Shalbatana
January 10, 2012 at 8:45am
I think you're missing the point a bit. Okay perhaps SETI@home isn't the best "better your life" example, but benefits arrive in your life all the time from projects like this. The human Genome project has already yeilded better medicines. There are plenty of other examples too.
On top of that is the idea that "hey, my computer's doing nothing for me at the moment. Why not let it help someone else?" You're going to find that small contributions will go a long way throughout your life.
AFA Seti@home itself. I participate because it's a personal interest of mine. And I would hope I'm alive the day they find evidence of life on another world, and I can bloat at all the "small thinkers" that they were wrong. (PS. I mean no personal insult by that, I have no idea of your views on the universe. I'm just making fun of people in general who think there's no life other than on our planet).
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