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发表于 2010-7-19 04:44:44
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本帖最后由 hawkwolf 于 2010-7-26 01:13 编辑
Crowdsourcing the search for aliens
The SETI Institute's Jill Tarter is looking for a few good filters.
众包搜寻外星人
Research from the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project is well known to most technologists because the SETI@Home initiative was one of the first widely distributed computing applications.
对于“搜寻外星智慧生命”计划（简称SETI）的研究为众多科技人员所熟知，因为SETI@Home的倡议是为数不多的一流分布式计算大范围应用中的一个。
Although decades of listening and analyzing radio signals have yet to yield proof of alien intelligence, the pursuit has resulted in significant advances in signal processing technology, as well as serendipitous discoveries in radio astronomy. Now Jill Tarter, director of the Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute, wants to take the distributed analysis of radio signals to the next level. Tarter, a speaker at the upcoming OSCON conference, discusses her new initiatives in the following Q&A.
虽然，几十年来倾听和分析无线电信号还没有得到外星智慧生命的有利证据，不过这项研究却引发了信号处理技术方面的重大进步，以及（导致）在射电天文学上的一些偶然发现。
现在，SETI研究所的SETI研究中心主管 Jill Tarter，希望将分布式的无线电信号分析推进到更新一级的水平。
Tarter，这位在即将举行的OSCON联合会上的发言人，在以下问答中阐述了她的新观念。
How is your new project different from existing distributed computing projects, such as SETI@Home?
你们的新项目与其他现存的分布式计算项目有什么不同，例如：SETI@Home？
Jill Tarter: SETI@Home came on the scene a decade ago, and it was brilliant and revolutionary. It put distributed computing on the map with such a sexy application. But in the end, it's been service computing. You could execute the SETI searches that were made available to you, but you couldn't make them any better or change them.
We'd like to take the next step and invite all of the smart people in the world who don't work for Berkeley or for the SETI Institute to use the new Allen Telescope. To look for signals that nobody's been able to look for before because we haven't had our own telescope; because we haven't had the computing power.
At the moment, we're swamped with data. We can't process it all in real-time. Ten years from now, Moore's law will allow us to catch up. Ten years after that, we'll probably be data-starved.
Our study has typically been done by analyzing the data in near real-time with things we've invented and custom-built over the years. We're about to change that by going into a cluster environment for the first time, and not building any accelerator cards or any special purpose hardware. That means anybody can help us write software to make this better. We're trying to get our code cleaned up enough to publish as open source and then let anybody do what they want with it.
Once a week we capture about eight hours of data that we're putting in the cloud. People thus far have been downloading big datasets. That's a bummer, operating on them in their own environment, using their own analysis tools, looking for different things. What we want to do, and what I'm hoping to demonstrate at OSCON, is release a new API that we've co-developed with a startup called Cloudant that will allow people to compile and debug their code locally and then upload it and operate using EC2 resources that Amazon has provided.
Jill Tarter（以下简称JT）:SETI@Home至今已有十年了，是个卓越的、有革命性的项目。 它让分布式计算在全球成为一个颇具吸引力的应用。但说到底，它是服务计算，你可以执行那些对你开放的SETI研究、但你不能改进它或改变它。
我们非常希望进入到下一阶段，邀请全世界那些不为巴克利或SETI研究所工作的聪明人，一起使用新的艾伦望远镜（Allen Telescope），去搜寻那些以前没人能搜寻到的信号，因为在之前，我们还没有自己的望远镜，我们还没有得到足够的计算能力。
现在，我们被数据所淹没， 我们不能完全实时地处理所有数据。 在今后的十年里，计算机发展的摩尔定律会让我们迎头赶上。要是再过十年的话，我们很可能会出现数据匮乏。
我们的研究通常由那些我们多年前已经开发、定制的程序，在近似于实时处理的状态下来完成数据分析。我们想改变为以集群计算环境为主，而且不需要插个什么加速卡或特殊用途硬件之类的东西。这意味着任何人都可以帮助我们写程序以使软件运行的更好。我们正在努力使我们的代码更明晰以作为开源程序发布，并让任何人都可对它做想做的改进。
我们每周一次捕获8小时要放入云端的数据，迄今为止，人们已在下载这些大数据集。比较偷懒的做法，（我们）让你在你自己的环境里用自己的分析工具对这些数据进行操作以找出些与众不同的东西。我们想做的以及我们希望在OSCON展示的东西已通过一个新API来发布，这个新应用程序介面由我们和一个叫做Cloudant的网站合作开发启动的， Cloudant允许人们在本地编译调试好他们的代码，并通过Amazon提供的EC2资源上传这些代码后执行。
How can people who aren't math wonks get involved?
那些不是数据分析专家的人如何参与？
JT: For people who don't have black belts in digital signal processing, we want to take regions of the spectrum that are overloaded with signals and get those out and have them visualized in different ways against different basis vectors. We'd like to see if people can use their pattern recognition capabilities to look or maybe listen; to tease out patterns in the noise that we don't know about.
That'll be a big challenge, and there will be a lot of matching of visual patterns that are real or imagined by the observer against known patterns of interference. That can involve a lot more of the world. Perhaps we can make it into a game.
JT：对那些不是数字信号处理黑带的人们来说，我们将提供些处理完后做了信号增强的、并在不同的基础向量上作了不同可视化处理的频谱区域。 我们希望看到人们可以利用他们的模式辨别能力来看或“听”，在这些噪音里找到我们所不知道的信号模式。
这会是个大挑战，那将会在已知的干扰模式中，出现很多由观察者提供的或许真实或许臆造出来的可视化模式。这可能涉及到有关这世界的很多方面。 我们也许能把这个方式作成个游戏。
How is the Allen Telescope different from traditional radio telescopes such as the Very Large Array?
艾伦望远镜与传统的射电望远镜有什么不同，例如：巨型天线阵（Very Large Array）
JT: The Allen Telescope is the first of what we call Large Number of Small Dishes (LNSD), a new way of building telescopes. It's a radio interferometer. That isn't new. We've had interferometers since the '70s. But creating the equivalent of a large telescope by building it out of lots of small pieces, by using consumer technologies wherever possible and by putting the complexity into computing, we've changed the paradigm and brought the cost down. I hope that we'll use it to change the world by detecting evidence of another technology or by discovering some new astrophysical phenomenon that no one yet thought of.
JT；艾伦望远镜是第一个我们称作大数量小天线盘（LNSD）的阵列，一个建造望远镜的新方式。这（巨型天线）是一种无线电干涉仪，并不是什么新科技。我们在20世纪70年代就有了干涉仪。 只是，设立很多小天线来建立一个与大型望远镜等效的射电望远镜阵列，利用尽可能多的大众化技术和在复杂性方面权衡好，我们只是改变了原来的建造模式并使成本变得更低。 我希望我们能利用它来探测其他科技的迹象或发现些新的我们从未想到过的天体物理现象来改变世界。
The Drake equation is a well-known estimate of the number of possible intelligent alien races that might exist in our galaxy. Does the recent discovery of planets around other stars shift the equation?
德雷克方程式(Drake equation)对我们星系里可能存在的外星智慧种族数量有一个众所周知的评估。现在对围绕其他恒星的行星发面的探索，让这个方程有所变化吗？
JT: Yes, in the sense that we're reducing the error bars on the fraction of sun-like stars that have planets. Within a couple of years, thanks to the Kepler mission, I think we'll have found the first Earth analog. That's going to make a big difference in people's perceptions about life elsewhere. So far, the planetary systems that we're finding look a bit strange when compared to ours. But when we actually find analogs, people will begin to say, "Wow, maybe there are other technological civilizations out there."
We're also moving from the other direction. We're starting to give microbes the respect they deserve, and we're getting blown away by the capabilities of extremophiles. Millions of years of evolution have made these things perfect for living and growing in battery acid and in all kinds of extreme conditions. So what we're also doing is broadening the potentially habitable real estate in the universe. It might not actually have to be quite such a Goldilocks "just right" planet for life to originate and evolve into something that's technological, although not humanlike. I think there's a real estate boom going on out there
JT：是的，我们正在减少类似太阳有行星围绕的恒星的比例上的误差线，在这个意义上（我们让方程有所变化）。今后几年里，感谢NASA的开普勒任务（Kepler mission），我认为我们将会发现第一个类似地球的行星。 那会给人们在其他（外星）生命的观念上带来更大的分歧。目前为止，我们探索中的众多行星系统与我们的地球相比看起来有点奇怪， 但是，当我们真得发现了类似行星的时候，人们会开始说：“哇，那里可能存在着另一种科技文明。”
我们也从其他方面得到了启发（来改变些这方程式）。 我们要给微生物它们应得的尊重，我们该为它们极限环境生存能力所折服。 数百万年的进化，已经让这些东西能完美地在电池酸液甚至其他各种恶劣的极限环境中生存繁衍。
因此，我们也在做的是扩展宇宙中潜在的、适合生命存在的空间的（定义）范围。
在一个适合生存的星球上，（微生物）起源恐怕不会被轻易终止、演化成某种有科技的东西也不无可能，只是（外表）看似不像人类。我想， 某个地方正在欣欣向荣地发展中。 |
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发表于 2010-7-17 14:45:09
