 |
|
 |
 advertisement
| |
|
|
|
|
|
The SETI Search Party Starts at Home...Yours
By Daniel Sorid
Staff Writer
posted: 07:00 am ET
05 May 2000
|
setiathome_interview The University of California at Berkeley has a reputation for staying on the cutting edge of society. For decades, it has managed to keep its place as a home of the liberal and freethinking while maintaining its standing as one of the top learning institutions in the country.Still, the school known as "Cal" is also, some would say, "out there." Dan Wertheimer, a researcher at the school, would agree. He heads up the university's alien hunting efforts -- a search from signals from extraterrestrials coming from "out there" -- commonly known as the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. SPACE.com met up with Wertheimer at a ceremony for a prototype of a powerful alien-searching telescope being put together by the SETI Institute.
What does Berkeley do in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence? We have actually four different SETI projects that are run out of Berkeley. Two of them are looking for radio signals from other civilizations. Two of them are looking for laser signals. For radio signals we are using the world's largest radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. It's 1,000 feet (305 meters) in diameter. You may have seen it in the movie Contact or Golden Eye. It holds 10 billion bowls of corn flakes, although we haven't actually filled it up with corn flakes to do that experiment.We collect data 24 hours a day at that radio telescope. We figured out a way to use the telescope at the same time that other astronomers are using it. We call it "piggyback SETI." Most people are lucky if they can get that telescope a day or two a year. To use it you have to compete with thousands of astronomers. But we've got our own receiver and we're using it all the time, 24 hours a day. The disadvantage is we don't get to point the telescope. But that's O.K. because we don't know where to look anyway. It's almost as good as having the telescope to ourselves.
| Dan Wertheimer, with a package of data from the Arecibo Observatory. |
How is the information processed? We have the SERENDIP machine that's running a giant supercomputer that listens to 160 million radio channels all at once. It's not like a police scanner that listens at one channel, and the next and the next. It's actually like having 160 million radios on your desk; each one tuned to a different frequency.
| The SETI@Home Screensaver. |
" ... if you're the lucky one that finds that distant signal, then you might get the Nobel prize, but you have to share it with 2 million people around the world who are helping us analyze that data."
What is your other radio project? We're also running at the Arecibo site the SETI@Home program, which instead of building a supercomputer, asks people around the world for help analyzing data. What we've done is create the world's largest supercomputer by having 2 million people around the world in 225 countries help us analyze that data. We've developed a screensaver program that you can get on the internet. The first thing it does is it connects to our server in Berkeley and gets a work unit, which comes from a particular part of the sky. Once you've got that work unit in your computer you don't have to be connected to the internet. It will start sifting through hundreds of millions of different radio signals, looking for some faint murmurs from a distant civilization. It will then make a connection and send that work unit back to Berkeley. Your name is attached so if you're the lucky one that finds that distant signal, then you might get the Nobel prize, but you have to share it with 2 million people around the world who are helping us analyze that data.
| The computer system running SETI@Home, inside Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory. |
Tell me about the optical project. There's a couple of ways you might find signals from other civilizations. One is that they might be sending radio signals. We send off radio and television all the time. I Love Lucy has gone past 10,000 stars already. Maybe other civilizations have radio or television or a navigation beacon. But maybe instead of using radio signals they might send us laser signals. We have very powerful lasers on Earth that could be used or interstellar communication. Maybe they are sending us something with a big laser, or a bright flash. In the last few years we've been looking for these laser signals coming from other civilizations, hoping they might send us something intentionally, maybe not intentionally. Lasers have the advantage that they can send a lot of information; you could send your whole Library of Congress, all your music, poetry, literature, science, medicine. We're looking for these laser signals at a couple of different telescopes. One system looks for laser pulses -- big bright flashes, short, maybe a billionth of a second. We're also looking for continuous signals. Any luck? We haven't found any signals yet from either radio or lasers, but I think Earthlings are just getting on the game. We're just learning how to do this. We're a primitive civilization; we've only had radio 100 years. Thats a blink of an eye in Earth's history. We would be very lucky to find it today or next year. I'm optimistic in the long run, because the more computing power, the better job you can do. Eventually Earthlings will be able to do a systematic search, and we'll find civilizations if they're out there. But don't hold your breath. Do you think the public supports this mission? Most scientists think that SETI is a very good thing to do, and even the public is overwhelmingly supportive. It's not a very expensive search. Either way, the answer is interesting. If we find out that we are alone, that's very profound. That means we better take precious care of this life on Earth. If we find out that we are not alone, then that's also very profound. We can learn a lot from other civilizations. There are going to be more advanced civilizations out there that we could learn a hell of a lot from. Maybe they would send us all their literature, science, medicine. Maybe they'd tell us how to get on the galactic internet. Whether we're alone or not, I don't know. But we won't know unless we search.
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
