how does seti really work?

[bwanaaa]

so, why look for gaussians? i know i sound like a teenager, but ireally do not understand the rationale for choosing this particular signal type.

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: bwanaaa
so, why look for gaussians? i know i sound like a teenager, but ireally do not understand the rationale for choosing this particular signal type.

A gaussian indicates that your telescope passed over a strong signal. If you look for a gaussian in what your telescope records, you look for a spot where your telescopes passed over a radio signal. You can then look up in the logs what spot on the sky that gaussian occurred, then point your telescope there to see what it finds.

 

[bwanaaa]

so, really, this is just a star mapping expedition. and has nothing to do with intelligence.

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: bwanaaa
so, really, this is just a star mapping expedition. and has nothing to do with intelligence.

No.

It looks for any new signal with the purpose of looking for intelligent civilizations.

The main reason they don't much funding through the traditional sources is because it's more of a fishing expedition. When applying for grants, you have to specify what you are looking for, what targets you will study, and what they will tell you. Basically, you have to tell them "Star <xyz> has shown evidence of being a star with property <abc>. We believe (cite papers) that stars with property <abc> will also exhibit strong features in region <pqr> of the EM spectrum. This is interesting because... We need this much telescope time to take these measurements at this required sensitivity etc etc"

SETI's proposals basically read like "We think there might be aliens out there, but we have no idea where. We're gonna just scan the sky and hope to hear something."


Other than the few new pulsars and other radio sources it has discovered, SETI's contribution to the astronomical knowledge base has been minimal. It was however, the first DC effort, and spawned every single other effort out there.