SETI@home shuts down after 21 years • Hacker News Board

Re: SETI@home shuts down after 21 years

#121

Post by ralusek » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 2:28 AM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #97

cletus wrote: post #80

Not to sound like a broken record (I and others have said this or similar on these kinds of threads) but... I, personally, have become convinced that looking for signals this way is actually pointless. The argument is basically this: 1. Within 1000 years (and maybe a lot less) we will have the engineering capability to build space habitats, powered by solar power. This last part is important because this thought expe…

>3. Space habitats are more convenient and cheaper to move between than leaving or even entering a gravity well like Earth's. I have always thought that this would be a much more efficient way of living off Earth. Sci-fi wants us to believe that we can teraform planets. All they ever talk about are the atmosphere generators. However, they never address the reason the planet didn't have an atmosphere to begin with. To…

Or, you know, just use walls and glass.

Re: SETI@home shuts down after 21 years

#122

Post by NetOpWibby » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 2:30 AM UTC

Wow, end of an era. I remember asking my mom to install it on her computer.

Re: SETI@home shuts down after 21 years

#123

Post by schoen » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 2:31 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #80

Not to sound like a broken record (I and others have said this or similar on these kinds of threads) but... I, personally, have become convinced that looking for signals this way is actually pointless. The argument is basically this: 1. Within 1000 years (and maybe a lot less) we will have the engineering capability to build space habitats, powered by solar power. This last part is important because this thought expe…

> Even if it was, no known or currently theorized material could support this.

Which physical limits are most relevant to precluding the solid sphere? Tidal forces?

Re: SETI@home shuts down after 21 years

#124

Post by dylan604 » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 2:34 AM UTC

ralusek wrote: post #121

dylan604 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>3. Space habitats are more convenient and cheaper to move between than leaving or even entering a gravity well like Earth's. I have always thought that this would be a much more efficient way of living off Earth. Sci-fi wants us to believe that we can teraform planets. All they ever talk about are the atmosphere generators. However, they never address the reason the planet didn't have an atmosphere to begin with. To…

Or, you know, just use walls and glass.

Building habitable structures on a planet's surface is not the same as making a planet's entire environment capable of supporting humans. That's the point of teraforming which was the point of the comment.

Re: SETI@home shuts down after 21 years

#125

Post by seventytwo » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 2:36 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #93

cletus wrote: post #80

Not to sound like a broken record (I and others have said this or similar on these kinds of threads) but... I, personally, have become convinced that looking for signals this way is actually pointless. The argument is basically this: 1. Within 1000 years (and maybe a lot less) we will have the engineering capability to build space habitats, powered by solar power. This last part is important because this thought expe…

That's a fascinating comment, thank you. I personally suspect the engineering challenges might pale next to the challenges of political organization. Quite simply, the continued human expertise and organization necessary to manage and sustain such a system is far, far beyond anything we have today. We can't even manage to globally reduce CO2, and the recent government responses to coronavirus have led a lot to be des…

You make the case that political issues haven’t changed much isn’t he past 2400 years, but then go on to say you’d like to see us manage things here at home before expanding into space?

Those seem to be in conflict to me. I do agree that human engineering has developed far faster than human politics, but I think we need to just accept that this trend will continue.

Re: SETI@home shuts down after 21 years

#126

Post by hedora » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 2:37 AM UTC

cjauvin wrote: post #119

rantwasp wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

luuuucky. i only got the k6 :O

I had a K6-233 which was always on the verge of overheating (or maybe I was obsessing a bit too much about monitoring it). I envied my friend's K6-200, which was more stable it seemed.

My K6-233 got so hot it demagnetized its CPU fan. I noticed after the floating point unit fried the first time I tried to play some post-quake FPS.

After that, it would boot, but the antivirus software I was running said it had a virus. I guess that was the only msdos program in the boot sequence that performed floating point.

Re: SETI@home shuts down after 21 years

#127

Post by couchand » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 2:37 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #93

cletus wrote: post #80

Not to sound like a broken record (I and others have said this or similar on these kinds of threads) but... I, personally, have become convinced that looking for signals this way is actually pointless. The argument is basically this: 1. Within 1000 years (and maybe a lot less) we will have the engineering capability to build space habitats, powered by solar power. This last part is important because this thought expe…

That's a fascinating comment, thank you. I personally suspect the engineering challenges might pale next to the challenges of political organization. Quite simply, the continued human expertise and organization necessary to manage and sustain such a system is far, far beyond anything we have today. We can't even manage to globally reduce CO2, and the recent government responses to coronavirus have led a lot to be des…

TIL it was Steve Bannon that killed off Biosphere 2.

Re: SETI@home shuts down after 21 years

#128

Post by Balgair » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 2:41 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #80

Not to sound like a broken record (I and others have said this or similar on these kinds of threads) but... I, personally, have become convinced that looking for signals this way is actually pointless. The argument is basically this: 1. Within 1000 years (and maybe a lot less) we will have the engineering capability to build space habitats, powered by solar power. This last part is important because this thought expe…

This is based on the current knowledge of physics that we have. We know that it is fairly incomplete.

~5% of the universe is made of the stuff that you, I, a cloud, and the sun are made of. We understand this stuff very well, in terms of cosmic scale stuff.

~20% of the universe if made of dark matter. We know that this stuff falls down and really doesn't do anything else. Does it interact with itself, with us, can we make sandwiches out of it? No clue.

~75% of the universe is made out of dark energy. We know that this stuff makes other things ... fall up (?). Well, kinda, maybe? We're totally at a loss as to what the super-majority of the universe is, let alone what it is doing, or what we can do with it.

Presumably, if there are other intelligences out there, they may know if they can do anything with the other ~95% of the universe and they may be making it into burritos or something. We're a long way away from concluding anything about anything.

Re: SETI@home shuts down after 21 years

#129

Post by milesward » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 2:44 AM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #91

wtallis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weren't they also supported by the Abit BP6 motherboard, letting you use two of them as poorer man's Xeons?

Indeed they were. I had that exact setup. Overclocked the hell out of them. Unlike the 550 MHz someone else suggested, I'm 97.6% sure I only had them clocked at 450 MHz.

Yup, dual 450 celery was my gaaaangster setup at my silly startup :)

Re: SETI@home shuts down after 21 years

#130

Post by Beldin » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 2:48 AM UTC

ars wrote: post #120

StillBored wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought the more realistic answer was that the window to detect an emerging civilization is on the order of a couple decades. In that time they go from simple easily detectable modulation schemes that are broadcast at very high power to modulation schemes that are nearly impossible to differentiate from noise at much higher efficiency/lower power levels. Much like we have, in the 1950's it was all high power…

Radar. That's the RF that's easiest to detect from long distances, it's focused, and it's strong. The hard part is deciding if it's natural or artificial.

Top of my head, so I may be off, but: The Arecibo message was easily the easiest to detect by far. Its signal will become indistinguishable from background radiation at a distance of slightly over 625 light years.

The converse: any life out there trying their best to communicate with us, beyond 600 ly... we wouldn't realize it even if we happened to catch (what's left of) the signal.