5 ms·

COSMIC SETI

76 points by ulrischa 3y ago

menthe 3y ago
More technical article about the new deployment: https://science.nrao.edu/facilities/vla/observing/cosmic-seti https://science.nrao.edu/facilities/vla/observing/cosmic-set... So glad to see SETI alive. Next step, building a proof-of-work token to bring back SETI@Home and leverage thousands more GPUs :']
- dang 3y ago
  Thanks! We've changed the url to that from https://www.seti.org/press-release/cosmic-seti-institute-unlocking-mysteries-universe-breakthrough-technology-karl-g-jansky-very-large https://www.seti.org/press-release/cosmic-seti-institute-unl....
agucova 3y ago
From the article: The COSMIC system is a cluster of FPGA, CPU, and GPU hardware, which at all times receives a copy of digitized data streams from each of the VLA’s antennas. The data received by COSMIC necessarily reflects antenna-pointing, LO-tuning and digitization settings commanded by VLA observers, but otherwise operates completely independently. In particular, COSMIC is unaffected by any of the interferometric phasing, channelization, or correlation processes of the VLA’s facility instrument: WIDAR. COSMIC comprises three main components: A fiber optic splitter, which duplicates digitized data streams from the VLA antennas and delivers these to COSMIC digital instrumentation. A small FPGA Cluster, which receives VLA antenna digitized data streams, channelizes these to 1 MHz frequency resolution, and transmits these data streams over multiple industry-standard 100 Gb/s Ethernet links. A CPU/GPU Cluster which receives 1 MHz resolution data over Ethernet and performs a variety of digital signal processing operations, ultimately outputting SETI signals of interest (often referred to as "hits") into a database for further analysis. And the CPU/GPU cluster in particular is extremely interesting: The COSMIC CPU/GPU pipeline implements a beamformer, high-resolution channelizer, doppler-drift search, and calibration correlator. The configuration parameters of these algorithms may be varied in order to best leverage the array’s behaviour as dictated by the Primary Observer. The COSMIC CPU/GPU processing pipeline is still under development, but will have the following capabilities: Buffering of ∼ 5 minutes voltage data for all antennas in the VLA; Beamforming of up to 32 coherent tied-array beams; Incoherent beamforming; Configurable frequency resolution between 1 MHz and 1 Hz; Inter-antenna correlation (used for gain calibration observations) with millisecond time resolution; and Doppler drift searching for narrow band signals (in antenna or beam data) with linear drift rates between -50 Hz/s and +50 Hz/s. In normal operation, the COSMIC system will search for candidate signals with non-zero linear drift rates, and will permanently archive small data snippets (< 100 kHz bandwidth and < 5 minutes duration) around these events. This is really cool!
calamari4065 3y ago
Why compete with other researchers for telescope time when you can just use ALL the time! It's honestly a perfectly sensible setup. SETI doesn't particularly care where in the sky they're looking, they just want as much data as can be acquired. Piggybacking off of everyone else's observations is just as good as pointing the antennas at random sections of the sky. Here's hoping they find something interesting
gmuslera 3y ago
Things should be pretty silent if we are in a dark forest. Unless the top of the food chain predators sometimes make noise waiting for naive preys that answer.
- tempestn 3y ago
  The dark forest has always seemed like too much of a just so story to me. I doubt that beings that would actually act in the way predicted would reach that level of advancement in the first place. I expect the real explanation for lack of observed extraterrestrial life is more mundane.
  - lifthrasiir 3y ago
    And the dark forest is not enough to hidden the sunlight if it is bright enough. So that concept can only apply to early space civilizations, assuming that space civilizations eventually use more and more energy and leave enough trail to be detected anyway.
    - gmuslera 3y ago
      We are still an early space civilization. We don't know if more advanced ones must have an energy trail as we don't have their science yet. We don't know even if they must expand neither, nor live in planetary surfaces or a lot of things that culture assumes from other civilizations.
      - lifthrasiir 3y ago
        You are entirely correct, hence my assumption. I think non-expansive civilizations are out of question as it's far more likely that we are never able to detect them even if they exist. The energy trail is more debatable, but that necessarily needs a violation of the second law of thermodynamics, so it still sounds like a reasonable assumption to make.
  - dmichulke 3y ago
    I don't see it as a "just so", I see it as a game-theoretically valid strategy. It doesn't mean any alien race we're talking about will do this (just as we don't currently) but that it probably makes sense to at least one of them. And that is a good enough a reason to shut up. ---- Alternatively, here's the bet your implicitly taking: Upside - contact with an alien civ Downside - extermination

76 points by ulrischa 3y ago

More technical article about the new deployment: https://science.nrao.edu/facilities/vla/observing/cosmic-seti https://science.nrao.edu/facilities/vla/observing/cosmic-set... So glad to see SETI alive. Next step, building a proof-of-work token to bring back SETI@Home and leverage thousands more GPUs :']

dang 3y ago
Thanks! We've changed the url to that from https://www.seti.org/press-release/cosmic-seti-institute-unlocking-mysteries-universe-breakthrough-technology-karl-g-jansky-very-large https://www.seti.org/press-release/cosmic-seti-institute-unl....

agucova 3y ago

From the article: The COSMIC system is a cluster of FPGA, CPU, and GPU hardware, which at all times receives a copy of digitized data streams from each of the VLA’s antennas. The data received by COSMIC necessarily reflects antenna-pointing, LO-tuning and digitization settings commanded by VLA observers, but otherwise operates completely independently. In particular, COSMIC is unaffected by any of the interferometric phasing, channelization, or correlation processes of the VLA’s facility instrument: WIDAR. COSMIC comprises three main components: A fiber optic splitter, which duplicates digitized data streams from the VLA antennas and delivers these to COSMIC digital instrumentation. A small FPGA Cluster, which receives VLA antenna digitized data streams, channelizes these to 1 MHz frequency resolution, and transmits these data streams over multiple industry-standard 100 Gb/s Ethernet links. A CPU/GPU Cluster which receives 1 MHz resolution data over Ethernet and performs a variety of digital signal processing operations, ultimately outputting SETI signals of interest (often referred to as "hits") into a database for further analysis. And the CPU/GPU cluster in particular is extremely interesting: The COSMIC CPU/GPU pipeline implements a beamformer, high-resolution channelizer, doppler-drift search, and calibration correlator. The configuration parameters of these algorithms may be varied in order to best leverage the array’s behaviour as dictated by the Primary Observer. The COSMIC CPU/GPU processing pipeline is still under development, but will have the following capabilities: Buffering of ∼ 5 minutes voltage data for all antennas in the VLA; Beamforming of up to 32 coherent tied-array beams; Incoherent beamforming; Configurable frequency resolution between 1 MHz and 1 Hz; Inter-antenna correlation (used for gain calibration observations) with millisecond time resolution; and Doppler drift searching for narrow band signals (in antenna or beam data) with linear drift rates between -50 Hz/s and +50 Hz/s. In normal operation, the COSMIC system will search for candidate signals with non-zero linear drift rates, and will permanently archive small data snippets (< 100 kHz bandwidth and < 5 minutes duration) around these events. This is really cool!

calamari4065 3y ago

Why compete with other researchers for telescope time when you can just use ALL the time! It's honestly a perfectly sensible setup. SETI doesn't particularly care where in the sky they're looking, they just want as much data as can be acquired. Piggybacking off of everyone else's observations is just as good as pointing the antennas at random sections of the sky. Here's hoping they find something interesting

gmuslera 3y ago

Things should be pretty silent if we are in a dark forest. Unless the top of the food chain predators sometimes make noise waiting for naive preys that answer.

tempestn 3y ago
The dark forest has always seemed like too much of a just so story to me. I doubt that beings that would actually act in the way predicted would reach that level of advancement in the first place. I expect the real explanation for lack of observed extraterrestrial life is more mundane.
- lifthrasiir 3y ago
  And the dark forest is not enough to hidden the sunlight if it is bright enough. So that concept can only apply to early space civilizations, assuming that space civilizations eventually use more and more energy and leave enough trail to be detected anyway.
  - gmuslera 3y ago
    We are still an early space civilization. We don't know if more advanced ones must have an energy trail as we don't have their science yet. We don't know even if they must expand neither, nor live in planetary surfaces or a lot of things that culture assumes from other civilizations.
    - lifthrasiir 3y ago
      You are entirely correct, hence my assumption. I think non-expansive civilizations are out of question as it's far more likely that we are never able to detect them even if they exist. The energy trail is more debatable, but that necessarily needs a violation of the second law of thermodynamics, so it still sounds like a reasonable assumption to make.
- dmichulke 3y ago
  I don't see it as a "just so", I see it as a game-theoretically valid strategy. It doesn't mean any alien race we're talking about will do this (just as we don't currently) but that it probably makes sense to at least one of them. And that is a good enough a reason to shut up. ---- Alternatively, here's the bet your implicitly taking: Upside - contact with an alien civ Downside - extermination