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SETI@home is in hiberation

setiathome.berkeley.edu

61–70 of 145 posts

Re: SETI@home is in hiberation

#61
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the current US conspiracy theories, the UFO/UAP conspiracy is still the most interesting and fully developed/ongoing conspiracy space. Just check out the recent 'Age of Disclosure' documentary from this year. I'm not arguing a position on the theory, just saying it's very active and has the old-school qualities that were present in the 90's.

It's not a conspiracy anymore

I'd really like to see it disclosed by a government that isn't panicking about epstein files/being impeached and trying to cover up other stories before I'm fully convinced

Re: SETI@home is in hiberation

#62
post #39
post #9

This was my screensaver for several years starting in maybe 2001. It felt really cool as a 12 year old to be contributing to the project in some small way. For a long time I would periodically check on the screen saver in case there would be some big message saying my computer found aliens or something. Never did though :)

I remember seeing a prank program years ago that showed the SETI@home screensaver for a bit, then popped up an alert box saying "Alien Life Found!" with options to submit or cancel(!). If you tried to submit it would spend a while with a really slow progress bar, and then say it failed to submit and asked you to contact SETI directly. I wonder if anyone actually did....

I wonder if that screensaver ever made it into the Xscreensaver BSOD screensaver. I hope so.

Re: SETI@home is in hiberation

#63
post #60

I remember at the time that donating CPU time was considered trivial. Not so much today. At the time of SETI@home, a typical CPU used maybe 20W at full load, fans usually ran at constant speed, and power management was much more primitive. So you barely noticed the difference between idle and full load, both on your electricity bill and on the noise the PC made. Now hundreds of watts is not uncommon if you also use t…

I generally run BOINC during the winter in place of a space heater, but that's only a cold month or two of the year.

Re: SETI@home is in hiberation

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Even humanity’s (weak) radio emissions would be detectable from tens of light years away, and stronger emissions from much further. That's not true. Non-directional radio transmissions (e.g. TV, broadcast radio) would not be distinguishable from cosmic background radiation at more than a light year or two away [0]. Highly directional radio emissions (e.g. Arecibo message) an order of magnitude more powerful than the…

This is my biggest issues with all of the messages we keep sending out to space. By the time it gets to its destination, it will basically be indistinguishable from noise

That depends. If there is "someone" within 20 light years advanced enough to detect our signals we can establish communication and learn from each other - the 40 year round trip time means we can only ask long term questions, but just sending all of human knowledge, and them returning with their knowledge can be a big leg up for both (though sorting through all the things we already know will be a big effort). They may have solved fusion, while we are still 50 years away, meanwhile we have solved something else they are interested in but haven't solved yet.

20 light years is about the farthest useful communication can be established. The farther out things are the longer the round trip and thus the more likely we have already figured things out by the time we get their answer. It would still be interesting to get a response, but our (and we assume their) civilization is moving too fast for much knowledge sharing. Eventually with knowledge sharing you assume something is obvious that isn't and so you get another round trip. Watching an alien movie no matter who far away they are will be interesting (even if it is more a smell based or something that we don't think of)

There is no reason to think we will ever visit them, but we can do other things when they are close.

There are not many stars within 20 light years though. The Femi paradox doesn't exist at that distance, there just not enough stars to expect to find life that close.

Re: SETI@home is in hiberation

#65
post #9

This was my screensaver for several years starting in maybe 2001. It felt really cool as a 12 year old to be contributing to the project in some small way. For a long time I would periodically check on the screen saver in case there would be some big message saying my computer found aliens or something. Never did though :)

It was my screensaver too and it felt like the most sci-fi thing ever. I'd stare it while daydreaming about aliens.

Re: SETI@home is in hiberation

#66
post #17

It looks like folding@home is still going https://foldingathome.org/ I'm quite surprised these are still around as I hadn't seen them mentioned in so long. I always assumed the phase out of screensavers (and introduction of CPU low power modes) were terminal for them.

Folding@home got a boost recently from Pewdipie deploying his 12-stack 4090 build against it and then getting a bunch of his fanbase to also participate in his folding@home squad.

Re: SETI@home is in hiberation

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a conspiracy anymore

I'd really like to see it disclosed by a government that isn't panicking about epstein files/being impeached and trying to cover up other stories before I'm fully convinced

I mean this is a meta-conspiracy in itself. I don't think you're incorrect/wrong, but using one conspiracy theory to hide a conspiracy with lots of evidence is interesting.

Re: SETI@home is in hiberation

#68
post #60

I remember at the time that donating CPU time was considered trivial. Not so much today. At the time of SETI@home, a typical CPU used maybe 20W at full load, fans usually ran at constant speed, and power management was much more primitive. So you barely noticed the difference between idle and full load, both on your electricity bill and on the noise the PC made. Now hundreds of watts is not uncommon if you also use t…

My homelab is in a closet that has the water meter for my above-garage apartment. Before I put a heater in the garage itself, I needed to make sure that that closet didn't freeze. I rigged up a temperature sensor to start mprime on a server if the temperature got too low, but higher than the electric heater that's also in that closet. I figured I might as well contribute to research if I'm just burning watts for heat anyways.

Re: SETI@home is in hiberation

#69
post #9

This was my screensaver for several years starting in maybe 2001. It felt really cool as a 12 year old to be contributing to the project in some small way. For a long time I would periodically check on the screen saver in case there would be some big message saying my computer found aliens or something. Never did though :)

My dad did a similar thing with a bunch of computers at his store. It made way more sense back when processors didn't clock down efficiently so there was such a thing as 'wasted/excess clock cycles' you could donate to a distributed computing project. Now though processors shut off cores, reduce their clock speed etc so there's a lot less spare processing power you can siphon off without increasing power draw.

Re: SETI@home is in hiberation

#70
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When conspiracies were a bit more fun. Anyone else collect The X-Factor partworks magazine? I used to love reading it.

Of all the current US conspiracy theories, the UFO/UAP conspiracy is still the most interesting and fully developed/ongoing conspiracy space. Just check out the recent 'Age of Disclosure' documentary from this year. I'm not arguing a position on the theory, just saying it's very active and has the old-school qualities that were present in the 90's.

There's some genuinely weird shit unexplained, I'll give you that. Unlike Bigfoot, where you can look at a map of the historical range of bears and see it exactly matches where all the Bigfoot sightings are.
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