nieuws: SETI stopt zoektocht naar aliens
Gaan wij ook stoppen?
NEE!
Zie onderstaande quote:
Q&A about the ATA shutdown
The news that the Allen Telescope Array has gone into "hibernation" due to lack of funds was broken by Scientific American. We've known that this was a possibility for quite a while, but are sorry to see it happen. Since there's an implied relationship between the SETI@home and the SETI Institute, I thought I would open a Q&A thread about this closure.
Q. How does this closure affect SETI@home?
A. It really doesn't. While some of our projects (Fly's Eye experiment) have used the ATA, SETI@home doesn't use any data from ATA. We also don't currently receive any funding from the SETI Institute, and are not affected by their budget.
Q. Why has the ATA closed?
A. The ATA has gone into hibernation due to lack of funding. ATA requires about $1.5M/yr for operations and an additional $1M/yr to support the SETI Institute's science programs. $2.5M/yr sounds like a lot, but the cost of one F/A-18 jet could fully fund that for 23.5 years.
Q. What do you mean by "hibernation"?
A. Hibernation is in between operational and fully shut down. In hibernation some systems necessary to keep the telescope healthy are still powered on. In a full shutdown, critical components would be removed from the telescope and put into storage to prevent damage. That would make restarting expensive. But keeping systems powered during hibernation is also expensive. If funding is not found, at some point the decision would be made to shut down completely.
Q. Have they asked NSF/NASA/Paul Allen/Rupert Murdoch/George Soros/Richard Branson/Bill Gates/Oprah?
A. I'm sure the answer to the first two is "yes." But the NSF and NASA have spent their money on new instruments and/or telescope arrays and are getting squeezed in other areas. The billionaires? I have no way of knowing. I know that I would have no way of getting in contact with any of them.
Q. Why don't you pool your resources with the SETI Institute's in order to save the telescope?
A. We don't have that kind of money. We're also on a very tight budget and will have enough difficulty keeping SETI@home in operation with our current funding.
Q. If you personally had the money to keep it operating, would you donate it?
A. Probably not. As envisioned, the 350 telescope ATA would have been a great instrument for SETI. But as it exists now, the 42 telescope ATA is less sensitive to SETI signals than Arecibo and takes longer to survey the same amount of sky. That doesn't mean it's inappropriate for anyone's research, it just doesn't fit the bill for mine.
The expansion to 350 telescopes will take much more money than the I will ever have known anyone who knows anyone who has. It may even approach the cost of that F/A-18. I'd love to see it happen, but I'm understandably pessimistic. If I were a billionaire and had 60 million burning a hole in my pocket, then I might fund the expansion. Assuming I didn't blow it all on ninja supermodel robots first.
Q. Will this be the end of the SETI Institute?
A. Not by a long shot. Remember the start of the SETI Institute what caused by the cancellation of all federal SETI funding. If the ATA closes down, I think the SETI Institute will just concentrate on making instrumentation that they can use on other telescopes.
Eric Korpela
Inhoudsopgave Seti@Home hitparades week 20
- DPC SETI@Home hitparade van 15 mei 2011
- DPC SETI@Home hitparade van 16 mei 2011
- DPC SETI@Home hitparade van 17 mei 2011
- DPC SETI@Home hitparade van 18 mei 2011
- DPC SETI@Home hitparade van 19 mei 2011
- DPC SETI@Home hitparade van 20 mei 2011
- DPC SETI@Home hitparade van 21 mei 2011
Wat is Seti@Home ?
Wat is SETI@home?
SETI@home is de naam van een wetenschappelijk experiment dat computers die via het internet met elkaar verbonden zijn, inzet om buitenaardse intelligentie op te sporen. U kunt hieraan deelnemen middels een gratis computerprogramma dat radiotelescoop-data download en analyseert.
NIEUWS UPDATE
26 Apr 2011 | 22:38:58 UTC
Heigh Ho - it's been a while. Not much to write about as most everything has been status quo, plus I was out of town for a few days in there. Yeah, there have been some minor quirks in the meantime - par for the course, I guess. We did have our Tuesday outage today, which beyond the normal tasks included swapping out dying drives with new ones in two of our major servers: thumper and bruno. You may have noticed the web site go dead for 15 minutes there while thumper was off line. The fact that both drive swaps/reboots went along quickly and without and hitches speaks well of our current server quality and configuration, I guess.
In case anybody missed it, Eric responded nicely to the current wave of news regarding the Allen Telescope Array going into hibernation. I swear every time there's a SETI related article in a major publiation (positive or negative) we have to do some kind of damage control, cleaning up various journalistic errors and reader misconceptions.
- Matt
[Voor 0% gewijzigd door Anoniem: 140925 op 22-05-2011 12:31]