A New Telescope to search out the heavens for "light signals from distant civilizations"...
(Photo: Primary Mirror of The Planetary Society's Optical SETI Telescope at Oak RidgeConstruction of Planetary Society's Optical SETI telelscope in Oak Ridge, Massachusetts. The primary mirror on 16 February 2002. Credit: Paul Horowitz)
How cool is that?
And it is happening right now!
In addition to SETI....
(Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: http://www.seti.org/ )
.....searching the universe, or at least parts of it, for the last few years for radio communications from distant civilizations, a new "optical telecsope" has been dedicated to the newest search for friends from the cosmos.
The optical telescope was given to "Oakridge Observatory, which is about 35 miles from Bostonm via a grant from the "Planetary Society".
Oakridge and other observatories have long used other telescopes for this very thing, but this new telescope will be dedicated SOLEY for the use of finding intelligent civilizations elsewhere in the universe.
Click on the links below to learn more about this exciting endevor:
http://www.planetary.org/about/press/releases/2006/0411_Planetary_Society_Opens_Worlds_First.html
JS Online: News:
And a little more about the forces behind this awesome milestone in man's search for other life forms in the universe can be found by Googling the term "SETI".
Lots of info. for those interested in trying to find out what some very brave and intelligent people are trying to do to find signs of life other than our own in this massive wonderous universe of ours.
Updated: After reading with renewed interest, some information on SETI's website, I have decided to try and do my part for the "search for extratarrestrial intelligence" and so I have just downloaded the "BIONIC" Software to my computer and plan on installing it and running the application this morning. I had the original SETI AT HOME software installed on my various computers through the years but had lost touch with the application when the original software changed to the BIONIC version. It just ate up too much of my computer power and made my laptop run way too hot....but it seems that a newer version is out now and they have fixed alot of the things that made the original application a bit sluggish on some people's computers.
To those that may be unfamiliar with SETI AT HOME, it is a project that was started a few years back by the Planetary Society where people could download a "screensaver type application" to their computers that would scan various "radio signals" from the heavens.
These signals were sent by the SETI team to your computer and during idle times (when your computer is not in use), the application would take over as a "screensaver" and anylise blocks of info that were sent to the application and once the info had been anylized, it would be sent back to SETI.
The new version of the software can not only anylize radio signals from the heavens but in true "Grid Style Computing"...crucnh information on other subjects as well.
A link to the BIONIC site for anyone wishing to download the application is below:
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/
Happy Crunching for Alien Life to All......
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