Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community - View Single Post

troutman · 09-03-2004, 03:36 PM

How SETI@Home works:

http://www.planetary.org/html/UPDATES/seti/HIW0.htm

The SETI@home receiver scans the skies from its perch on the Arecibo radio telescope, completing a survey of the entire sky every 9 months or so. It collects radio data on a frequency band of 2.5 MHz around the central frequency of 1420 MHz. This raw data is then delivered on tapes to SETI@home headquarters in Berkeley, California. There it is chopped up into small "work-units" 107 seconds long and about 10 KHz wide. These work-units are then distributed to SETI@home users around the world, who analyze the data on their PC's.

one must still sift through the billions of channels surveyed, and differentiate between man-made interference, naturally occurring signals, and "The Real Thing". This requires massive amounts of time on the world's largest and fastest computers. Sadly, these kinds of resources are rarely available to SETI researchers, and processing the signals has become a bottleneck in the search.

As of November 2000 almost two and a half million users have downloaded the program onto their personal computers! This makes SETI@home easily the world's largest supercomputer.

09-03-2004, 03:36 PM	#18
troutman Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Crowsnest Pass Exp:	How SETI@Home works: http://www.planetary.org/html/UPDATES/seti/HIW0.htm The SETI@home receiver scans the skies from its perch on the Arecibo radio telescope, completing a survey of the entire sky every 9 months or so. It collects radio data on a frequency band of 2.5 MHz around the central frequency of 1420 MHz. This raw data is then delivered on tapes to SETI@home headquarters in Berkeley, California. There it is chopped up into small "work-units" 107 seconds long and about 10 KHz wide. These work-units are then distributed to SETI@home users around the world, who analyze the data on their PC's. one must still sift through the billions of channels surveyed, and differentiate between man-made interference, naturally occurring signals, and "The Real Thing". This requires massive amounts of time on the world's largest and fastest computers. Sadly, these kinds of resources are rarely available to SETI researchers, and processing the signals has become a bottleneck in the search. As of November 2000 almost two and a half million users have downloaded the program onto their personal computers! This makes SETI@home easily the world's largest supercomputer.