Wouldn't it be cool if... (seti idea)

[Wiz]

I've been thinking for a while that there seems to be (correct me if I am mistaken) promise of credit given to the crunchers who may discover ET, there has been no thought (at least publicly) to giving credit for anything else.

Wouldn't it be cool if they awarded some kind of credit publicly to those whose crunching discovered astronomical phenomena?

It would be so very cool to have a certificate that says something like:

"User Robor on this day discovered a quasar at (spacial co-ords)"

or

"User DMcOwen on this day discovered a black hole at (spacial co-ords)"

or

"User Smokeball on this day discovered a pulsar at (spacial co-ords)"

Now wouldn't that be great? I believe it would increase interest in the project and make those few who do find something very happy campers!

 

[GunDog]

Kewl Idea.. I like it

 

[Evadman]

That would be very cool, but I don't see how they could discover those things. It would be closer to : Smokeball discovered a triplicate with power of XXXX.XX. And such.

Not too sure about what is going to be in SETI 2 though, so maybe it will be possable. It would still require independent verifacation.

The idea has tons of merit though.

 

[Smoke]

Kewl, if it could be done.

 

[dmcowen674]

That is a good idea and I believe has been discussed, my guess is that the Astronomical Community which fights for funds as it is does not want to "let go" of any breaking Astronomical news. Politics and money of things unfortunately but who knows it could change with all this power shifted into the Amateur Community online. It takes good discussions like this and the positive outcome as well as the support from all over the world to affect change.

 

[RickD]

I like it to RickD

 

[IsOs]

Super idea

 

[deerslayer]

That would be cool !

 

[MoFunk]

That would be very cool. Would look nice on my wall.

 

[Wiz]

I think right now the project is viewed by outsiders (and many participants) as a "Find the little green / gray men" thing.
This would shift focus by the public to more of a scientific center, and possibly draw in users who only want their processing to be done for "hard science".
I think it would be a big win for publicity, for participants and likely for funding as well.

BTW, while I am sure it would not be "simple" it really is just a matter of good database design and use to tell which users crunched which WU's leading to any find.

 

[Crazee]

I agree totally

I think it is a great idea and I think Wiz is right it would bring to light that this project is more than the search for ET

 

[Strawa]

great idea, time to alarm other teams to support this idea and maybe put some pressure about this at Berkeley team?
It could increase interesting for Seti project overall!
Smokeball take some action!

 

[RazeOrc]

yeah, you'd think the members of the worlds largest supercomputer which always seems to go overlooked on the top500.org supercomputer list would get some credit, hell these DC projects are cool to participate in by themselves, throw in the possibility of a footnote in the annals of history and that would just be plain sweet

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: Wiz


"User Robor on this day discovered a quasar at (spacial co-ords)"

or

"User DMcOwen on this day discovered a black hole at (spacial co-ords)"

Great idea, but I want to discover the black hole!

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: Robor

Originally posted by: Wiz


"User Robor on this day discovered a quasar at (spacial co-ords)"

or

"User DMcOwen on this day discovered a black hole at (spacial co-ords)"

Great idea, but I want to discover the black hole!

You guys already did make that discovery of the black hole Robor, Former Governor of the State of ...well you know

 

[Wiz]

It would be great if some of you guys that have the attention of the project admins would mention this to them.

 

[Ken g6]

That would be cool! And it wouldn't have to be breaking astronomical news, either. They could record users that find these things, and publish their finds on the net only after the find itself is published.

For example, jackalope.wild.cs.colorado.edu could have found a pulsar two months ago. SETI would have found it a month ago, published the find, and today I'd discover a new entry in my list of finds.

 

[Smoke]

Try to be lucid ... I've just sent Dr. Anderson a link to this thread.

 

[Assimilator1]

I think its a cool idea too ,but I don't know whether the current S@H searches for all those phenomnia?

 

[Smoke]

A copy of my email to Dr. David Anderson and his response.

> Greg Lawrence wrote:
>
> Hello David,
>
> Check out the following link to a thread in the AnandTech Forum.
>
> http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=39&threadid=925014
>
> Is anything like the ideas expressed, possible?
>
> Greg Lawrence
> aka Smokeball
> TeAm AnandTech SETI

That would indeed be cool!
The type of data analysis we're doing in SETI@home
doesn't produce any natural phenomena
(because it looks only for narrow-band signals,
which don't occur naturally).
But one of our next projects, Astropulse,
may very well discover a few pulsars.

-- David

 

[JWMiddleton]

Originally posted by: Smokeball
A copy of my email to Dr. David Anderson and his response.

But one of our next projects, Astropulse,
may very well discover a few pulsars.

-- David

Astropulse! Is that going to be SETI IV???

 

[Assimilator1]

No its going to be 1 of the projects you can run on BOINC ,which S@H2 is going to run on.

SB
Nice to see you got a quick response

 

[Wiz]

hmmm.. then what's all the commotion I've heard like "the seti@home project has discovered more quasars than Nasa in the time it has been running" about?
I have been under the impression that the S@H project has discovered some astronomical phenomena. I have proudly told this to friends and colleagues.
Have I been mistaken all this time? :|

 

[Smoke]

I remember reading someone saying something like that too. I just did a search and if you check out the 9th post in This Thread, you'll see that you were not the only one thinking that quasars were found by S@H.

I did find some references about Pulsars and S@H in this article titled "SETI@home Searches for Pulsars".

We need to have more threads like this one. Most of us probably know a lot more about computers than we do about astronomy. I wonder how many of us know the difference between pulsars and quasars? :Q

Who knows the answer WITHOUT looking it up?

 

[Spacehead]

Quasars are, i believe, the super bright cores of very distant galaxies.
Pulsars are a remnant of a supernova explosion, i think.

Not something i'd usually look for on a night of observing, so i'm a little rusty on the details.
I think there may be a couple of quasars in reach of amateur scopes, but you'd probably have to go out West to really dark skies & have a 30" scope or more.