SETI - The Search for Extra Terrestrial IntelligenceSETI is a research project hunting for existence of extra-terrestrial intelligence by scanning the skies and listening to radio signals.
History of SETI
SETI is an acronym for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. It was started in 1984 as a private, non-profit organisation called the SETI Institute. Its mission is to explore, understand, and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe, and to apply the knowledge gained to inspire and guide present and future generations. SETI takes over from the research that NASA started under Project OZMA, which ran from 1959 to 1960. When the funding was repeatedly cut by Congress it fell into private ownership.
SETI was primarily listening for radio signals from outer space which could indicate the existence of extraterrestrial life. SETI also monitors for a response to the Arecibo Message, the most powerful broadcast ever deliberately beamed into space by the Arecibo radio telescope.
Instruments Used by SETI
SETI takes in data from observations from Arecibo (under Project Phoenix) as well as the Allen Telescope Array, several ground-based optical telescopes such as the Shane telescope at Lick Observatory, the W.M. Keck telescopes and IRTF in Hawaii, and the Very Large Telescopes in Chile.
SETI researchers also use space telescope facilities, including the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, Kepler, TESS, and the Herschel Space Telescope.
SETI gathers a huge amount of data from these sources and it all needs to be processed quickly. SETI needed to find an innovative way of processing it fast.
SETI@Home Project
Seti@home is a distributed computing project using Internet-connected computers, hosted by the Space Sciences Laboratory, at the University of California, Berkeley. The purpose of SETI@home is to analyse the huge amounts of data incoming from the Arecibo radio telescope, and others, searching for possible evidence of radio transmissions from extraterrestrial intelligence.
With over five million participants worldwide, the project is the grid computing project with the most participants to date. Anybody can participate by running a free-of-charge program that downloads and analyses radio telescope data.
It performs four tests:
- Searching for spikes in power spectra
- Searching for Gaussian rises and falls in transmission power, possibly representing the telescope beam's main lobe passing over a radio source
- Searching for triplets, three power spikes in a row
- Searching for pulses possibly representing a narrowband digital-style transmission
While the project has not found any conclusive signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, it has identified several candidate spots for further analysis. On September 1, 2004, an interesting signal SHGb02+14a was announced.
I have been participating in the SETI@home project for nearly three years now, and have contributed hundreds of hours to the project.
