New SETI site lets you join the search for extraterrestrial life

Seems like this would be the right place for this thread.
lets join the search for extraterrestrial life. all you have to do is create an accout and start searching.

link to the site is below.
www.setilive.org...

The SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute is asking the public to join in its hunt for signals from intelligent civilizations out there in the universe. Anyone can register on the new website, SETI Live (setilive.org), to help analyze data from SETI's radio telescope devoted to scanning the heavens for signals from E.T.

"There are parts of the spectrum where our sophisticated signal processing system is overwhelmed because there are so many signals," said astronomer Jill Tarter, director of the SETI Institute's Center for SETI Research. "I'm hoping to put together this army of citizen scientists to help figure out which signals to follow up on."

In contrast to some other crowd-sourced science projects, such as SETI's own SETI@Home, which rely on users donating spare computer time to data crunching, this project is asking the public to donate brain power."You don't do anything in SETI@Home; your computer does," Tarter told SPACE.com. "In this case, I want you actively involved and it has to be quick. You have to recognize patterns, mark patterns, try and remember if you've seen that pattern before. And you have to get it done within 90 seconds."







Astronomer Dr. Jill Tarter is Director of the Institute's Center for SETI Research and also holder of the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI.
CREDIT: SETI
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The public will sort through data collected by SETI's Allen Telescope Array, a set of 42 radio dishes in northern California that spend their time listening in many frequency bands for signals from stars recently identified as hosting planets. The telescope is looking for radio emissions that exhibit a pattern indicating it was artificially produced by intelligent beings. [10 Alien Encounters Debunked]

Though SETI has an automated algorithm that can sift through much of the data recorded, some signals occupy a frequency band so crowded that it requires humans, and not computers, to sort through it.

"The people that will do the best at this are going to be people whose pattern skills are such that they can ignore the bright pattern that's so easy to detect and look to see that there's something else there, something fainter, and see if they can in fact discover this needle that's buried under the hay."

The new SETI Live site came about after Tarter made a TED Prize Wish in 2009 to "empower Earthlings everywhere to become active participants in the ultimate search for cosmic company."

TED Prize, a nonprofit dedicated to "Ideas Worth Spreading," collaborated with SETI and another citizen science initiative, the Zooniverse project at Chicago's Adler Planetarium, to launch SETI Live.

"Three years ago, Dr. Tarter stood on the TED stage and asked us all to unite in the search for life on other planets," TED Prize director Amy Novogratz said in a statement. "The TED community responded by dreaming big and working hard – with many milestones to show for it. This landmark step empowers people around the globe to meaningfully contribute to this important scientific endeavor and work towards answering the ultimate question, 'are we alone?'"

Zooniverse runs the popular Galaxy Zoo project that has recruited 150,000 people to help classify huge numbers of galaxies.

"Galaxy Zoo is a gold standard in terms of developing citizen science projects that actually allow people to do meaningful work in a science project," Tarter said. "I think there's a lot of value in that."

SETI Live is also partnering with the Science Channel to publicize the new initiative.

Scientists associated with the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., have been searching for extraterrestrial civilizations since the 1960s, but have yet to find a signal. Lately, the search has become more targeted now that astronomers have detected more than 700 alien planets orbiting other stars.

Ultimately, the researchers remain optimistic that we are not alone.

"It could well be a long search," Tarter said. "It's a big cosmos out there."

You can follow SPACE.com assistant managing editor Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz.

source:www.space.com...

looks interesting and like it could be some fun, i'm gonna have a go. s&f for you

Holy crap!! A way to honestly help look for ET's hell yeah!!!!

Tried it out.. got stuck. And every 3 seconds I have to re log in.. Idk why.
Other then that it seems like a great way to search for life on exoplanets, just leave it to the people

reply to post by BruceEFury


I know i just kind of tried it and it was pretty confusing...

Ya i saw this and signed up. Pretty cool idea. But not sure how it'll end up.

i'm not sure why seti are doing this, distraction, diversion, idk.... but what i do know is that if thousands of people can look up and see spacecraft regularly, why haven't seti managed to find anything yet? i don't believe they've not seen anything, and i don't believe they're looking either. as far as i'm concerned it's just another ruse, the reason for which i have no idea.

maybe they're trying to extend their looking horizons too far. maybe they should adjust them to include all the spacecraft within our airspace and try and communicate with them instead.

Originally posted by ladyteeny
i'm not sure why seti are doing this, distraction, diversion, idk.... but what i do know is that if thousands of people can look up and see spacecraft regularly, why haven't seti managed to find anything yet? i don't believe they've not seen anything, and i don't believe they're looking either. as far as i'm concerned it's just another ruse, the reason for which i have no idea.

maybe they're trying to extend their looking horizons too far. maybe they should adjust them to include all the spacecraft without our airspace and try and communicate with them instead.

edit on 2-3-2012 by ladyteeny because: (no reason given)

IF you actually looked at the site, you would know that SETI consists of signals from different targets around the universe pointing at star systems that contain exo-planets. The reason they are doing this having other people look is because there are simply just to many for the 10 - 15 scientists sitting at the SETI observitory to look at. And as far as them looking at the sky for spaceships goes.. There not looking for them so they can be laughed at by the scientific community and be cut down by the MSM for being crazy conspiracy nuts (You know how the status quo is nowa days). This is the most deepest search for E.T. ever, looking for life on planets with the right amount of ingredients to hold life seems like the best way to go about it.. Why catch some footage of a craft we can't prove to be E.T. when we can find a whole planet full! I have a feeling this thing is going to pick up some steam.

How does this differ frm SETI@Home ?

I'm confused. people have been helping SETI for years now, with background processing from their own pc's..

well over 10 years.

Originally posted by BruceEFury

Originally posted by ladyteeny
i'm not sure why seti are doing this, distraction, diversion, idk.... but what i do know is that if thousands of people can look up and see spacecraft regularly, why haven't seti managed to find anything yet? i don't believe they've not seen anything, and i don't believe they're looking either. as far as i'm concerned it's just another ruse, the reason for which i have no idea.

maybe they're trying to extend their looking horizons too far. maybe they should adjust them to include all the spacecraft without our airspace and try and communicate with them instead.

edit on 2-3-2012 by ladyteeny because: (no reason given)

IF you actually looked at the site, you would know that SETI consists of signals from different targets around the universe pointing at star systems that contain exo-planets. The reason they are doing this having other people look is because there are simply just to many for the 10 - 15 scientists sitting at the SETI observitory to look at. And as far as them looking at the sky for spaceships goes.. There not looking for them so they can be laughed at by the scientific community and be cut down by the MSM for being crazy conspiracy nuts (You know how the status quo is nowa days). This is the most deepest search for E.T. ever, looking for life on planets with the right amount of ingredients to hold life seems like the best way to go about it.. Why catch some footage of a craft we can't prove to be E.T. when we can find a whole planet full! I have a feeling this thing is going to pick up some steam.

you're right, i didn't bother looking because i've already consigned them to my own personal disinfo folder.

the reason i've done that is this. seti stands for Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. most of us know there are unknown craft out there, almost at the ridiculous point. if seti are searching for extra terrestrial intelligence, why not communicate with the ones we DO see and ask them where they come from? unless of course they have information that proves they don't come from "outer space". if they're "looking for life on planets with the right amount of ingredients" then they're not actually looking for extra terrestrial intelligence, they're wasting time, energy and money on, once again, fooling the general public.

most of us already know there's extra terrestrial intelligence out there, why don't seti adjust the perameters to include scientists that might be able to find a practical way of communicating with them properly?

it's like knowing someone lives 2 streets away from you, yet when you search for them you decide to start by looking 100 miles away first. doesn't make sense.

If anyone is having trouble figuring out how to use the site there is a tutorial that shows you how to do it in the link below.

www.setilive.org...

How does this differ frm SETI@Home ?

In SETI at home your computer does the processing (distributed computing). In SETI live you do the processing (Crowd Sourcing). I have just finished reviewing my 411 peice of signal data. I am not sure that the UC Berkley will ever tell us if they find an artificial alien signal or not but here's hoping.

I found an interesting looking signal

talk.setilive.org...

reply to post by moekuba


Cool thanks for the Info, ive just signed up. Should be a lot of fun.

Is the site still doing active searches? I just linked over there and it said no telescopes were online and there was only 1 person classifying.

The Allen Telescope Array, which is where SETI Live gets its data, has been having serious technical problems since July, 2013. Opportunities to observe and classify live data at SETI Live have been few, far between and largely unpredictable, since then. Information on when the problem might be corrected is vague and sparse, and not currently updated.
It is still possible to classify archived data there. This is helpful because a SETI signal might have been missed when its data set was examined previously, by computer. The human mind and eye can still discern things that computers will miss.
Classifying archival data also helps weed out spurious signals. The fewer of these they have to contend with, the more data can be reviewed, more quickly, with the ever present hope of finding a genuine SETI signal.

Summing up the situation with SETI Live since my last post, seven months ago:
The SETI Institute eventually did get the Allan Telescope Array to work properly again, and resumed offering live data for volunteer analysis.
Unfortunately, many of the volunteers had dropped out during the long hiatus, and did not return. There were substantially periods of time when there were apparently too few participants to generate the consensus necessary to trigger re-observations of radio sources in near real time, which was one of the main purposes of the SETI LIve project. This circumstance presumably caused even more volunteers to lose interest.
SETI Live is currently carrying the announcement, posted on October 8th, that the SETI institute has made a decision to no longer fund the Live Data re-observation sessions through the SETI Live project. These sessions will cease on October 12th. They add that one will still be able to analyze archival data from the Allan Telescope Array after this date. Please see the last two paragraphs of my preceding post, for an explanation of the usefulness of volunteer analysis of archival data.