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Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
Pulses, Triplets, and Gaussians: Rescoring the Reobservations
It has been more than a year since the SETI@home crew spent a hectic week at Arecibo, pointing the giant radio telescope at some of SETI's most promising targets. Much of the data collected during the reobservations has since been repackaged as work units, and sent out to users around the world for analysis.
New and Improved SETI@home will Form the Backbone of Distributed Computing Network
SETI@home and BOINC are gradually converging, and the benefits for both are substantial. While SETI@home enjoys the increased flexibility of the BOINC platform, it brings to BOINC something of inestimable value to a distributed computing project: millions of SETI@home users, willing to use their computers' processing power for the advancement of scientific research.
Analyzing the Reobservations
SETI@home chief scientist Dan Werthimer and his team went back to Arecibo to reobserve the most promising candidate signals detected by the project so far. Unlike most of the year, when SETI@home piggy-backs on the regular operations of the telescope, this time the Werthimer's crew had the full use of the resources of the giant dish.
Watching Spirit Launch to Mars
Spirit has successfully launched to Mars, and I was there with members of the science team to witness it.
Reobservations Report No. 8: Beyond the Countdown: SETI@home Makes Plans for the Future
SETI@home's Stellar Countdown has come to an end at the Arecibo Radio Observatory. All in all the Stellar countdown observed 227 promising locations in the sky. Within the next few weeks all the data collected and recorded will be processed by SETI@home users around to world.
Reobservations Report No. 7: On Last Day at Arecibo, SETI@home Turns to Distant Planetary System
After getting bumped off the telescope last week to make way for Solar flare observations, SETI@home Chief Scientist Dan Werthimer and his crew will spend 14 hours today observing the locations of SETI@home's most promising candidate signals, as well as a few other interesting locations.
Reobservations Report No. 6: Solar Intervention Postpones SETI@home Reobservations
SETI@home's plans to reobserve its most promising candidate signals were interrupted today by the unexpected intervention of a Solar flare.
Reobservations Report No. 5: First Observation Session Completed at Arecibo
The SETI@home team has completed the first of its three 8-hour observation session at Arecibo, designed to revisit the most promising candidate signals detected so far by SETI@home.
Reobservations Report No. 4: Results in Real Time
SETI@home scientists will have to wait for several weeks for the full analysis of the data collected during the reobservations. But even while the observations are going on at Arecibo, they will already have a good idea if they have found something significant.
Reobservations Report No. 3: Selecting the Finalist Candidates
For three successive days SETI@home will have use of the giant Arecibo radio telescope to revisit the most promising candidate signals detected since the project was launched in 1999. SETI@home Chief Scientist Dan Werthimer and his team put together a list of the
Reobservations Report No. 2: Reobserving, Recording, and Reprocessing
For the first time during the reobservations, Werthimer and his crew will have use of another recorder. This is Arecibo's
Reobservations Report No. 1: Shifting Gears at Arecibo
In the next few days, SETI@home Chief Scientist Dan Werthimer, along with team members Eric Korpela and Paul Demorest, will head down to Arecibo in Puerto Rico. There, at the site of the largest radio telescope in the world, they will begin a new chapter in the short history of the project: the reobservation of SETI@home's most promising candidate signals.
SETI@home Listens to the Dying Gasps of Black Hole
If we were to listen to radio transmissions from space, we should be able to hear the dying gasps of black holes. As it turns out, we are listening, or at least the SETI@home receiver is. Perched above the giant Arecibo dish, it is systematically surveying a large portion of the sky, listening to the signals coming from space.