Interview David Anderson
U.C. Berkeley SETI@home Director
ENTREVISTAS / INTERVIEWS
(c) Astroseti.org 2002-2004
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This interview was realized by Emilio González, Astroseti founder, exclusively to David Anderson, Seti@home project director, during his visit to Spain from 17/11 to 24/11 2003.
Please, if you intend to use part or the whole content of this interview in another website or media, inform it has been taken from this page.
Emilio (Offler) at left and David Anderson at Right, both at Residencia de Estudiante, madrid.
Listen to David Anderson greeting Astroseti members in spanish
Video format MPG ( 294 Kb )
Astroseti : Recently there was a "reobservation campaign" of the most interesting signals at Arecibo. Have we found something interesting in the candidate signals ?
David Anderson :Not so far. We recorded data at both 2 bits/sample and 8 bits/sample, and recently finished analizing the 2-bit data. We found no signals matching the original "candidate". The 8-bit data gives about 50% better sensitivity; we will analize it using BOINC. Also, the reobservation was based on the first 50% of Seti@home data- We still have to finish back end analysis of the second half, and then we'll do another reobservation run.
Astroseti : .- Having the word "extraterrestrial" in the project's name helped it to reach popularity. But do you think most people, even users, really understand it's true science ?
David Anderson :I think the great majority of S@H users are very aware of the scientific nature of the project, and very realistic about its chance of finding an ET signal in the near future. But other people are most no so aware. When I talk to reporters I often need to explain that we do not "belive in ETs"; we're just looking for evidence. Belief without evidence is not science.
Astroseti : What's Seti@home biggest success : to be the biggest ever computer or to involve so many users from all countries in a scientific project ?
David Anderson :Both. But maybe more important than what we have accomplished is what we have shown to be possible. And I hope that S@H, and future projects, will increase our "radios of awareness" in space and time. Without this, humanity will continue to behave like a bacteria colony.
Astroseti : Can Seti@home reach a point where it will have so many users that you won't have enough units for them ? It's not just because of increasing number of volunteers, but computers are also increasing their power
David Anderson :Yes. We're responding to this in two ways. One is BOINC, which will allow S@H's computing power to flow into other projects when we're not recording data.
The other is our plan to record larger frequency bands, both using our new 16-channel data recorder, and also the future "tapeless" data distribution system, which BOINC makes possible.
Astroseti : It's planned to use the Parkes telescope in Australia for Seti@home. Can you inform us about this project current situation ? Do you plan to use more telescopes ?
David Anderson :We finished building the data recorder several months ago. However, there are many other tasks - for example the client algorithm will be completly different. This is delayed while we move S@H to BOINC and finish it. By that time Arecibo may also have a multi-beam receiver, which will be much superior to Parkes in sensitivity. So we may stay at Arecibo for a while.
But eventually we hope to use Parkes, because of its sky coverage. And we'd like to visit Asutralia.
Astroseti : Seth Shostak, Seti Institute's astronomer, said he expects to find a signal within the next 25 years. Are you so optimistic ?
David Anderson :It depends on what priority we (humans) give to it. Possibly ETI can only be found with space-based telescope. Will one be built ? I don't know. My colleague Dan Werthimer thinks we'll find ET in 50-100 years; I trust his intuition.
Astroseti : How would you react if a signal was verified and confirmed as extraterrestrial intelligence . Is our society prepared for such discovery ?
David Anderson :No, our society is not ready for contact. Let's face it - we have many skeletons in the closet ( dirty laundry ). But the effect of contact on society would be positive, like when a city hosts the Olympics - it hastily improves its apparence and behavior, and often these changes last.
Astroseti : You're ready to launch BOINC, a platform to run several independent distributed projects in the same computer. Obviously it's a great advantage for users that won't have to decide for just one project. How does BOINC benefit Seti@home? It's the biggest distributed project in number of users and they could migrate to other BOINC projects very easily.
David Anderson :BOINC will let us rapidly develop and deploy new algorithms. It will let us route data thorugh many ISP "pipes", greatly increasing bandwidth. it will let us archive data on PC disks instead of tape. it will let us develope cool 3-D graphics using OPEN GL, and will let users to customize them. I could go on much longer !
We're not worried about losing users to other projects; in fact we think BOINC will greatly increase public awareness of "@home" computing and will give us more CPU in the end.
Astroseti : Which projects are interested in moving to BOINC?
David Anderson :Folding@home will be the second. After that it could be Climateprediction.net; I've had many talks with them, as well as LIGO ( a physics project involving gravity waves), CERN ( particle physics ), Woods Hole ( phylogenetics ), and a VLBI astronomy project.
Grub ( a distributed web-indexing project ) has talked with me. Also an academic Internet performance mapping project from Israel. That's all I can remember now.
Astroseti : Astropulse is using Seti@home data for detecting evaporating black holes, and a detailed map of our galaxy was done using Seti@home data too- These projects are not only interesting but also can give more credibility (and funds?) to Seti@home. Are there more projects in mind?
David Anderson :We haven't discussed use of S@H data beyond Astropulse. but we hope to find other "secondary" uses of our future multibeam data, such as pulsar search. BOINC will make it easy to do this, without even redistributing the data.
Astroseti : Astroseti mailing list has more than 5000 subscribers from all hispanic countries. A few words for them, please :)
David Anderson :I'm very, very impressed by the spirit and success of Astroseti.org in bringing SETI and astrobiology into the hispanic world, and creating a true "virtual community". I look forward to being more involved in this community; it is an honor for me. And also a pleasure - I love hispanic culture, especially music, and I enjoy conversing in Spanish in spite of my bad accent (Emilio can verify this).
Un abrazo a todos los de Astroseti.org! ( Said in spanish by David Anderson )
Astroseti :Thank you and welcome to Spain
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