From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4@msn.com)
Date: Tue Jun 18 2002 - 09:00:25 PDT
----- Original Message -----
From: SETI Web
Sent: Monday, June 17, 2002 4:11 PM
Subject: SETI@home news
This newsletter covers the following topics:
- Message from our sponsors
- Science news
- Project news
- New web site features
Dr. David P. Anderson
Project Director, SETI@home
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu
To be removed from our mailing list,
see the instructions at the bottom of this message.
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SUPPORT SETI@HOME - JOIN THE PLANETARY SOCIETY
The Planetary Society (TPS) is one of the few organizations in the
world that fund SETI research. TPS members support several
innovative programs that scan the skies of both hemispheres,
searching for possible signals from other civilizations.
As we struggled to get SETI@home off the ground,
TPS stepped forward to become our founding sponsor.
They made SETI@home happen!
We strongly encourage all SETI@home users to join TPS.
If you join today, you'll receive a free poster of the
famous "Pale Blue Dot" image of Earth,
with the inspirational words of Planetary Society co-founder Carl Sagan.
Go to https://planetary.org/membership_bluedot.htm
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You can also support SETI@home by shopping at the SETI@home store:
http://www.exploratoriumstore.com/explo/setmainpag.html
Now you can save 15-40% on everything from mugs and T-shirts
to science activity kits and desk clocks.
Show your support by wearing a SETI@home T-shirt, sweatshirt, or jacket.
Spend $75 or more and receive a free hat!
Let us know what other items you'd like to see in the SETI@home store;
email us at seti@exploratorium.edu.
A randomly selected correspondent will win a SETI@home sweatshirt.
Thanks also to our other major sponsors: the UC DiMI program,
Sun Microsystems, Network Appliance, Fujifilm Computer Products, and Quantum;
and to individuals around the world who have generously donated to SETI@home:
see http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/donor.html
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SCIENTIFIC NEWS
Using the processing power of SETI@home participants,
we've amassed a huge database of candidate signals -
3.2 billion spikes and 266 million Gaussians.
Now we're sifting through these signals.
The first step involves comparing the redundant results for each work unit,
making sure they agree, and discarding erroneous results.
Then we identify the times and frequencies at which man-made
interference has occurred, so that we can filter it out.
Finally we look for signals that are "persistent" -
that occur at the same place and frequency, but at different times.
Currently we have checked our Gaussian and pulse signals,
and have found several thousand persistent signals; see
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/Candidates/index.html
We are applying for telescope time at Arecibo to reobserve
these points in the sky.
We continue to record data on the Hydrogen line band at Arecibo.
Our receiver was out of operation from August 2001 to March 2002
because of hardware problems at Arecibo.
We installed a new receiver and have started recording again.
We've also started using the SETI@home data tapes for two
completely different purposes: making a map of hydrogen gas
in the Milky Way, and searching for broadband pulses that might
be evidence of evaporating black holes - a phenomenon
that has been predicted but not observed.
We also might detect broadband pulses from ET; no one has ever tried this.
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PROJECT NEWS
SETI@home continues to grow.
In May 2001 we recorded our 3 millionth user,
in September we passed the ZettaFLOP (10^21 operations) mark -
by far the largest computation ever performed (at least on Earth!),
and recently we surpassed one million years of CPU time.
We are working on new SETI searches,
using new versions of SETI@home software.
We hope to start recording data at a telescope in Australia
(with coverage of most of the southern sky)
and to expand our frequency coverage at Arecibo, if we can raise the funds.
With success has come a variety of technical problems.
The most serious of these happened in early 2002 when the U.C. Berkeley
Internet connection became saturated; during peak hours
little bandwidth was available to SETI@home and many users
were unable to connect and get work units.
We have solved this problem by getting our own high-speed network connection.
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NEW WEB SITE FEATURES
We've added many new features to our web site, including:
- User profiles: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/user_profile/profile_menu.html
Write about yourself and about SETI, show a picture of yourself,
and browse profiles of other users.
Every day we highlight a "User of the Day" profile.
- Message boards: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/bb/bb.cgi
Converse with other users on a variety of topics.
- Progress page: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/process_page/
See a concise view of the SETI@home pipeline.
- Power maps: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/clickplots/
See a summary of the signals we've detected,
broken down by frequency and time.
- Class pages: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/classpages/
See other users who started running SETI@home on the same day as you.
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