posted on Jan, 10 2004 @ 01:38 PM
Originally posted by Russian
do i have to have cable internet?
and how does seti work.
it works only with internet on?
Thanx to ScienceGuyQ and pantha for replies to date!!
Russian - as stated, you don't need a cable modem or other form of "always on" connection - all you eed is someway of downloading a new work unit
(WU) and to upload the results of the previous WU back to SETI@home, so DUN is quite ok. The "beauty" of cable modem, of course, is that you can set
the machine to connect automatically, so that it can do these things whilst you're sleeping, eating - or even on holiday, as I do here!
SETI@home works by processing data received from the Arecibo radio telescope - the largest RT in the world. Eventually data will be colected for the
SETI@home Southern Hemisphere project, which Arecibo can't accesss because of it's latitude and because it can't be "steered" (essentially,
Arecibo is a crater in the ground - albeit 1000 feet in diameter!).
When the dat is collected, it is "broken" down into "bite sized pieces) and sent out as "Work Units" to participants in the programme ie people
who run SETI@home (ther are nearly 5 000 000 such people worldwide!)
The software "crunches" this to look for Gausssians and triplets and the like which are assumed to be significant and less likely to be "random
effects". Signals that show significant "artificial" trends are then noted and looked at again to see if the same effects are present. There are
also checks run by sending the *same* WU (randomly) to other people to see if there is a convergence of the data etc. It's said that *we* receive a
WU *we've* personally processed before about every 500 WU's, as a double check against our set up etc. However, nothing "sinister" is transmitted
along with the "crunched" data - purley the numbers involved. Output is visual and displayed as a graph.
As regards whether it *only* works when connected to the internet: no. SETI@home only needs to "connect" to retrieve a new WU after it has uploaded
the "old" ones data back to SETI@home. Otherwise, it "stands alone".
I hope this helps Russian - *if* you decide to run SETI@home, pelase consider joining the ATS SETI@home team!!