I ran seti@home for a few years on my old pentium 200mhz. Took like 15 days to analyze a block of information.
And if you discovered something major, you'd be the most famous person in the world, so i'm sure you'd get some kind of prize. However, i'm sure that most of the analyzing are done by seti's own servers, and the more probable areas are done in house.
The chance of you actually finding something are less than winning the lottery, getting struck by lightning and being involved in a plane crash all in a single day. There is so much space to analyze. I beleive I read that if you go outside and take a straw and put the straw to your eye and close the other eye, that is the percentage of space that we have analyzed and know about, and can see. Everything else we haven't even glanced at.
To put it into perspective:
We live on the outer edge of the Milky Way Galaxy. Our sun is one of billions of suns in our own galaxy alone. There could be billions of other solar systems orbiting suns in our galaxy, however it is very hard to detect other planets. Stars are more detectable. At the center of our galaxy is a black hole. It takes 3.4 light years to reach the closest system to us, Alpha Centari, just imagine getting across our own galaxy or even the universe from galaxy to galaxy. Seti depends on radio contact. Radio waves travel at the speed of light in a vaccuum. Someone would have had to been broadcasting for 3.4 years just to reach us from Alpha Centari. If we wanted to talk to someone on the other side of the galaxy, it would probably take tens of thousands of years for the message to get here or there.
If we find life in our lifetime, then the aliens are really fucking smart. Because we have no way whatsoever in contacting anyone that isn't in our own solar system.
[img]http://www.venusproject.com/ecs/images/photos/galaxy.jpg[/img]
The arrow points to our Star the Sun, which is only one of several hundred billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy... Pictured here...
The Star closest to our Sun is 4.5 light years away... ((A Light Year is the distance light travels in one year... Light moves at the speed of 186,272 miles or 300,000 kilometer per second...))
Our Sun is 30,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy... So, the light that we see coming from our Milky Way Galaxy's center, left there 30,000 years ago...
The known Universe contains at least 1,000,000 billion of other Galaxies... There is no doubt that there are other vast Universes in existence... Absence of evidence is not the evidence of Absence...
The Milky Way Galaxy contains at least 400 billion stars...
We are living on a planet that is in a constant high speed motion around itself and traveling on its orbit around the Sun. The circumference of the Earth at the equator is 25,000 miles or 40,000 kilometers. The Earth rotates around its axis once every twenty-four (24) hours time, or one whole day and night.
Earth’s circumference at the equator is 25,000 miles or 40,000 kilometers, divided by 24 hours is the equivalent to over 1000 miles or 1609 kilometers speed per hour. Therefore our home, Planet Earth rotates around its axis at speed of over 1000 miles or 1609 kilometers per hour.
Multiply by the cosine of your latitude to see how fast the Earth is rotating where you are.
While Planet Earth is rotating on its axis at the speed of over 1000 miles or 1609 kilometers per hour, Earth is also traveling, revolving on its oval orbit around the Sun at the speed of about 67,000 miles or 107,200 kilometers per hour once every 365 days or one whole year.
http://www.venusproject.com/ecs/planet_ ... _home.html
seti@home
seti@home -
08-19-2004, 08:03 PM
Linear Mode
