Do we have any other former SETI@home users here?
I’m still bummed that the project stopped and for that matter that nothing really came of their analyzation phase. Nothing seems to have happened since they moth balled it…
I wasn’t the most active user by by far but I had tens of thousands of classic cpu hours and some millions od current score after close to 20 years of on and off participation.
Sure, there are other projects I could join but… there was something magical about SETI to me.
For those who never heard of the project:
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/
You could donate spare cpu cycles to help analyze data from the Arecibo radio telescope to look for signs of artificial signals. You had it running in the background and as a screensaver if you wanted to see what you were analyzing.
I’m sure most of you have heard of it or similar distributed computing projects. There are plenty to choose from using BOINC (that S@h used) over at https://boinc.berkeley.edu/
https://foldingathome.org/ is one if the most known similar ones.
I just wanted to vent a bit.
I’m still struck now and then by the fact that they stopped the project and I get bummed out…
I used to run it. Once, while I was running the screensaver I looked over and the FFT was completely flat, with a repeating “blip” running across it. I’m sure it was just some local signal interference not an extraterrestrial message, but it was very weird and cool to see.
Been BOINCing for over a decade, and been earning Gridcoin for it the past few years as well. A great way to get something good out of my equipment and heat my house in winter! There’s still tons of great projects to contribute to. Come join us [email protected]
Oh neat! I’ll head over there and check things out!
Same here. Sad.
It felt like the end of an era. Even if nothing came out of it it still felt like you were actively helping SETI, that felt pretty awesome.
I used to run it on my desktops back in the day, when my rent included utilities and I had Pentium 3 and Pentium 4’s just chugging along while idle.
I was in in out that project since probably 1998. It was one of longest running.
I used to run that screensaver. I totally forgot about it.
Did they stop due to the Arecibo radio telescope collapsing and not being replaced?
At least reading the wiki article it looks like the problem was more about funding, and that while losing Arecibo was unfortunate, they could have used data from any other telescope:
However, in the overall long-term views held by many involved with the SETI project, any usable radio telescope could take over from Arecibo (which completely collapsed in December 2020), as all the SETI systems are portable and relocatable.
