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5 second work units

It happens sometimes. I don't have an explanation for it but I don't ever questions it.🙂 Count it as a gift from the SETI gods.😉
 
My understanding(maybe wrong) was that if there was a greater-than-normal amount of static or background "noise" in the work unit, that the SETI client might just ignore it and mark it as finished. I thought I recalled reading on the SETI site that such a work unit can also occur as corrupted data at the very end of a data tape as well.

Regardless, you'll still get credit for "completing" the WU. 🙂
 
What the others have said is correct, it can be due to way too much radio frequency inteference within the Work Unit, and these are gifts for the stats 😉

However, if a computer is spitting out lots of these work units (rather than just one every now and again) then there might be something wrong with the computer, such as not stable on an overclock (in which case you should knock the speed down), bad RAM (i have had this on a computer at my college, doing WUs in about 10 seconds) or some other deep down problem with the computer!


Confused
 
The "noisy" WU's contain a strong interfering signal which is usually caused by a radar or a satellite.
 
I thought if a result was sent back to Berkeley too quickly that they wouldn't give you credit? Or was that just a rumor (rumour for our friends abroad 😉 )?
 


<< I thought if a result was sent back to Berkeley too quickly that they wouldn't give you credit? Or was that just a rumor (rumour for our friends abroad 😉 )? >>



That's what I thought as well, isn't there like a 1 or 5 minute minimum?
 
When the computer was playing up at college it was downloading them at a rate of 1 a minute, and they were all accepted by Berkeley! :Q

Confused
 
I think if the WU comes back with too much noise interference then they count it regardless of the time.
 
I once had a ship that was also spitting them out in under 30secs!:Q ,I got my mate to shut off SETI on that rig after it spat about 15 of them at that speed!.
Turned out to be bad RAM ,if its just the odd 1 then they are just 'polluted' WU's ,like the others said🙂
 
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