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发表于 2008-1-5 19:14:41
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昨天在项目新闻里面已经贴过，这里就重复一下吧～
January 3, 2008
UC Berkeley Press Release: SETI@home looking for more volunteers.
SETI@home looking for more volunteers
By Robert Sanders, Media Relations | 02 January 2008
BERKELEY– The longest-running search for radio signals from alien civilizationsis getting a burst of new data from an upgraded Arecibo telescope,which means the SETI@home project needs more desktop computers to helpcrunch the data.
Since SETI@home launched eight years ago, the project based at theUniversity of California, Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory hassigned up more than 5 million interested volunteers and boasts thelargest community of dedicated users of any Internet computing project:170,000 devotees on 320,000 computers.
Yet, new and more sensitive receivers on the world's largest radiotelescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, and better frequency coverage aregenerating 500 times more data for the project than before. TheSETI@home software has been upgraded to deal with this new data as thesearch for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) enters a new era andoffers a new opportunity for those who want to help find othercivilizations in the universe.
"The next generation SETI@home is 500 times more powerful then anythinganyone has done before," said project chief scientist Dan Werthimer."That means we are 500 times more likely to find ET than with theoriginal SETI@home."
According to project scientist Eric Korpela, the new data amounts to300 gigabytes per day, or 100 terabytes (100,000 gigabytes) per year,about the amount of data stored in the U.S. Library of Congress."That's why we need all the volunteers," he said. "Everyone has achance to be part of the largest public participation science projectin history."
The 1,000-foot diameter Arecibo dish, which fills a valley in PuertoRico, is part of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center operatedby Cornell University with funds from the National Science Foundation.Since 1992, Werthimer and his team have piggybacked on radio astronomyobservations at Arecibo to record signals from space and analyze themfor patterns that could indicate they were transmitted by anintelligent civilization.
When the team's incoming data overwhelmed its ability to analyze it,the scientists conceived a distributed computing project to harnessmany computers into one big supercomputer to do the analysis. SinceSETI@home was launched, other distributed computing projects havearisen, from folding@home to predict the three-dimensional tangle of aprotein to the newly-launched cosmology@home to model possibleuniverses. Most are now on a platform called BOINC (Berkeley OpenInfrastructure for Network Computing), which was developed bySETI@home's director David Anderson so that the various projects couldshare resources.
"There are now 42 projects on BOINC, and, until now, there has been enough computing power to go around," Werthimer said.
What triggered the new flow of data was the addition of seven newreceivers at Arecibo, which now allow the telescope to record radiosignals from seven regions of the sky simultaneously instead of justone. With greater sensitivity and the ability to detect thepolarization of the radio signals, plus 40 times more frequencycoverage, Arecibo is set to survey the sky for new radio sources.
These improvements also prime the telescope for an improved search for intelligent signals from space.
"The multiple receivers help us weed out interference better and makeus less susceptible to thinking that things terrestrial areextraterrestrial,"
Werthimer said.
Werthimer noted that, despite the fact that UC Berkeley has beenanalyzing radio signals from space since 1978 on various telescopes, notelltale signals from an intelligent civilization have yet been found.
"Earthlings are just getting started looking at the frequencies in thesky; we're looking only at the cosmically brightest sources, hoping weare scanning the right radio channels," he said. "The good news is,we're entering an era when we will be able to scan billions ofchannels. Arecibo is now optimized for this kind of search, so if thereare signals out there, we or our volunteers will find them."
SETI@home has been funded by various organizations over the years,including the Planetary Society and Sun Microsystems, and continues tobe supported by individual donations from its volunteers.
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随着阿雷西博望远镜的升级，SETI@home 需要更多的志愿者参与计算！
新的更灵敏的接收器安装在阿雷西博上，频率覆盖范围比现在增强500倍。同时软件也将升级以处理新的数据来寻找外星文明，SETI@home将进入一个新的时代！
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新的七组接收器安装在阿雷西博望远镜上，可以同时接受7个区域的信号，而之前只能对一个区域。另外更灵敏的能力，可以对40倍以上的频率范围检测偏振的无线电信号。
多重接收器帮助我们更好的消除干扰，并降低地面信号的影响。
我们正在进入一个新的时代，将能够扫描数十亿渠道。 阿雷西博正在优化这种搜索，因此，如果有外星文明的信号存在，我们和我们的志愿者会找到他们。
SETI@home 多年来一直受到各团体资助，包括美国行星学会和Sun Microsystems等，还有持续来自志愿者个人捐款。 |
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发表于 2008-1-5 19:12:39
发表于 2008-1-5 19:45:07
