BOINC w/ seti@home proj question

Im a newbie to boinc, and am currently doing a seti@home project. I noticed the little graphics thing, which is recording sound data. Is there any way to listen to what it's recording, or am I completely off the track with what this is? Thanks,

Hi, do you mean the graphics bit that comes up when you click on 'Show graphics' or run it as a screensaver? You can't hear any sounds through SETI@Home. SETI@Home just analyses small chunks of data to see if there's anything out of the ordinary in them and then they're sewn together. I think it deals more with pulses and other things buried away in the noise.

reply to post by mattguy404


Yeah, I was just wondering if there was any way to listen to what it was analyzing/

I don't think there is... The bit of data that your computer analyses, if played, would probably only play for a few seconds (if you could somehow convert it into audio). I guess maybe if SETI does eventually find something, they would be able to convert it themselves to demonstrate what an extraterrestrial signal sounds like.

I know that they're listening on what's known as the 'hydrogen line', I think it's about 1420MHz... No one on earth is allowed to transmit on that frequency, so they're really just listening for little blips around that mark.