The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group A Guide to SETI Major Keary

SETI is not a mystical religious practice, but stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, which has developed from work that began some forty years ago: a series of science-based projects that have become more technically sophisticated, and which have attracted widespread public interest. The work has now reached a point where ordinary computer users can contribute through a program, SETI@home. SETI has little, if any, support from governments, and relies on private funding and support, which is where the computer proletariat comes in. 

"The concept behind SETI@home is rather novel. Instead of buying a supercomputer . why not take advantage of the fact that most personal computers are idle more than 90 per cent of the time? While each individual computer may not be particularly fast . there are hundreds of millions of PCs in use around the world, the majority of which are connected to the Internet at least part of the time. So rather than process all of the raw data in a central location, SETI@home enlists idle desktop computers to process small parcels of the raw data . the SETI@home program can run as a stand-alone application or can be activated by the computer as a screen-saver if it is idle for more than a few minutes." [Beyond Contact]

Launched in mid-1999 SETI@home's designers hoped to recruit 5000 users; at the end of its first year of operation over two million had registered. Ten people connect every second, and the servers transmit 22 Mbytes per second. Each work unit is processed twice to ensure accuracy of processing. The SETI@home software can be found at http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ and other information is at http://www.seti-inst.edu/Welcome.html.

As one would expect, there is an Australian connection. The University of Western Sydney runs a search program that piggybacks on the Parkes radio-telescope; have a look at http://seti.uws.edu.au/ for details.

So what is the benefit of SETI? Brian McConnell, author of Beyond Contact, says, "SETI is a technological frontier in telecommunications". If we are to detect some extraterrestrial civilisation it will be necessary to "push the technological envelope in many areas", which include radioastronomy, information theory, and telecommuni-cations. Wireless data networks will benefit from the development of techniques to "send more bits of information with less power" and overcome the limits imposed by having to use "a finite amount of radio spectrum to satisfy ever-growing demand".

If you would like to know more, or even join up as a volunteer, an excellent text has just been published.

Beyond Contact: A Guide to SETI and Communicating with Alien Civilizations is not a popular account of SETI, a piece of hyped-up pseudo-science, or a dumbed down introduction. It is a beautifully written explanation of the concepts involved, including terms that will be new to most readers, such as igene, meme, and Dutil-Dumas Pictographic System. Much of the discussion is in a computer science context, but stretches into other disciplines - for example, the physics of starlight. Really good illustrations assist the text, and - I am sure - would be useful models for teachers of physics, computer science, and a few other disciplines.

This is a fascinating account that does not require anything more than an intelligent interest in the science and computer technology associated with expanding our knowledge of space, developing techniques for the detection of signals from intelligent extraterres-trial beings, and devising messages that are likely to be understood by extraterres- trial recipients. It is not science fiction, or waffle about some vague notion, but a remarkable account of here, now science being applied to a real task. Regardless of one's feelings about the possibility of somebody being out there, the science is valid. A remarkable example of science writing that should be read by secondary teachers as a model for discussions on a number of subjects; this is also a text that deserves a place on the reading list for computer science courses, and is a worthwhile acquisition for libraries.

Brian McConnell:  Beyond Contact: A Guide to SETI and Communicating with Alien Civilizations ISBN 0-596-00037-5 Published by O'Reilly, hard cover,  417 pp.,  RRP $75.00 incl. GST.

Reprinted from the July 2001 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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