SETI Home Flags 100 Signals After Sorting 12B Others • Hacker News Board

Re: SETI Home Flags 100 Signals After Sorting 12B Others

#41

Post by TheFuzzball » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 8:34 AM UTC

bulbar wrote: post #23

pavel_lishin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who spends five minutes thinking about the consequences of deliberately leaving your house will conclude that the only safe, sane thing to do is stay the fuck inside.

Having it safe to go outside is the very point of a society. Outside of this safety Bubble there's a strong tendency for conflict and war. Only after two cruel world wars and a prolonged cold war, the western world got their shit together and decided 'enough of that'. And even that doesn't seem to hold much longer, so it seems we will only have managed to live peaceful among each other without an immediate conflict w…

We're like a paranoid child terrified that anyone that enters our room is going to steal our Lego, so we must be left alone!

Nobody wants our Lego.

Re: SETI Home Flags 100 Signals After Sorting 12B Others

#42

Post by sam_lowry_ » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 8:55 AM UTC

hkt wrote: post #13

serf wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

folding@home is still going I think? seti@home was definetly a cool screensaver, though.[0] [0]: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eric-Korpela/publicatio...

Folding is still going strong, as is: https://worldcommunitygrid.org/

Wasn't protein folding solved by our AI overlords once? Demis Hassabis? Alpha Fold?

Re: SETI Home Flags 100 Signals After Sorting 12B Others

#43

Post by singularity2001 » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 8:57 AM UTC

thegrim000 wrote: post #39

I've pretty much given up on traditional radio SETI ever finding anything, as its sole focus is on trying to find terrawatt/mega scale, repeating, intentional alien communication beacons, and nothing else. As I don't believe aliens would make such things, I don't believe traditional SETI will ever find anything. Out telescopes aren't sensitive enough to detect the power levels of comm signals that aliens would use in…

On the other hand, I hold the slightly fringe theory that suns are sentient beings, and by just watching the stars, we may see them communicate.

Re: SETI Home Flags 100 Signals After Sorting 12B Others

#44

Post by robertk » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:05 AM UTC

singularity2001 wrote: post #43

thegrim000 wrote: post #39

I've pretty much given up on traditional radio SETI ever finding anything, as its sole focus is on trying to find terrawatt/mega scale, repeating, intentional alien communication beacons, and nothing else. As I don't believe aliens would make such things, I don't believe traditional SETI will ever find anything. Out telescopes aren't sensitive enough to detect the power levels of comm signals that aliens would use in…

On the other hand, I hold the slightly fringe theory that suns are sentient beings, and by just watching the stars, we may see them communicate.

“Slightly fringe”

Re: SETI Home Flags 100 Signals After Sorting 12B Others

#45

Post by Zardoz84 » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:11 AM UTC

andrea76 wrote: post #17

Contact, recommended movie to watch! (For me much better than Interstellar)

The book is far better. They completely removed the "artist signature" from the movie.

Re: SETI Home Flags 100 Signals After Sorting 12B Others

#46

Post by GJim » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:22 AM UTC

robertk wrote: post #44

singularity2001 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, I hold the slightly fringe theory that suns are sentient beings, and by just watching the stars, we may see them communicate.

“Slightly fringe”

Heh

Arthur C Clarke once suggested that some supernova could be industrial accidents. A curiously romantic idea, and one I rather like!

Re: SETI Home Flags 100 Signals After Sorting 12B Others

#47

Post by cheschire » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:57 AM UTC

markus_zhang wrote: post #7

I used to run this on my computer in the early 2000s. I wish we had a similar project nowadays.

The article links to BOINC. https://boinc.berkeley.edu/

Re: SETI Home Flags 100 Signals After Sorting 12B Others

#48

Post by jryb » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 10:03 AM UTC

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #42

hkt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Folding is still going strong, as is: https://worldcommunitygrid.org/

Wasn't protein folding solved by our AI overlords once? Demis Hassabis? Alpha Fold?

Not solved at all. Certainly AF is very useful but what it outputs is a fundamentally a prediction with important limitations. There’s plenty of utility in physical modeling.

Re: SETI Home Flags 100 Signals After Sorting 12B Others

#49

Post by lazide » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 10:07 AM UTC

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #34

CJefferson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, AI are terrible at finding these types of patterns. You could hypothetically use AI to write algorithms to find the patterns, but people have already spent a long time super-tuning them. AIs can't even (at least I keep checking) solve Sudokus as well as my mother -- they aren't good with piles of numbers and complex patterns.

AI has been used in astrophysics for a long time, now. AI is more than genAI of the past 3-4 years... Classification tasks are handled by AI now because it's the only thing that gives you some accuracy at scale.

It depends on what you mean by AI. I bet if the two of you used clearer terms, you’d both be right.

Re: SETI Home Flags 100 Signals After Sorting 12B Others

#50

Post by whntheduvscry » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 10:53 AM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #20

andrea76 wrote: post #17

Contact, recommended movie to watch! (For me much better than Interstellar)

Three Body Problem as well for detecting signal. Pluribus as well

Also “Three Body” is the Chinese version of this, which is more in-depth.