Why the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI)?

In a previous post, I described how I developed a computing methodology that I called 'multiprocessing', and how a similar, but more elaborate and expansive methodology appeared later on the Internet generally called 'distributed computing'. Distributed computing allows any researcher around the world to set up a research project, one that requires huge amounts of computing, so that volunteers worldwide can easily contribute some of their computer's time to work on the project. Volunteers can elect to contribute to multiple projects.

Just as operating systems such as Microsoft Windows or Linix allow multiple programs (also called applications) to share the resources of one computer, BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) allows multiple research projects to share the resources of multiple computers worldwide over the Internet. Currently there are 1,269,740 volunteers with 2,688,370 computers around the world that are connected by BOINC to hundreds of projects (as reported by boincstats.com).

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/ is the leading project. About 61% of the volunteers run SETI@Home as one of their projects, and SETI@Home uses about 67% of the computers, generating 51% of the credits for work done. If the credits are proportional to the work done as they are supposed to be, than more than half of the BOINC computing is supporting the SETI@Home project.

Most of the other projects are biology research (mostly drug and disease research) or in the fields of climate, cosmology, and mathematics. But SETI is the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. The SETI software downloads and analyzes radio telescope data, trying to find signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Most BOINC projects have web sites that provide reports on the progress of the research. For example. on PrimeGrid.com you can get reports on the prime numbers that have been found so far. So I went to http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/ to find out what progress has been made on SETI. All I found were discussions about 'progress' meaning the amount of searching that has been done, but nothing about progress finding anything. So I did a more general Google search for SETI progress, and found things like:

We've done a lot of searching ..

We're improving our methods ..

We've found a lot of exo-planets ..

We have detected minerals on Mars that on Earth protect the process of photosynthesis.

Not very impressive. I already knew that many planets orbiting other stars have been found, but nearly all of these are judged unable to support life, and they are too distant for detection of life anyway. And that last one is like finding a sharp knife in a house and concluding that a murder was possible. So I kept searching for SETI progress.

On the web site http://openseti.org/Read6.html I read:

At an August 6, 2004 symposium organized by The Planetary Society, titled The Significance of Negative SETI Results, leading SETI experts scratched their heads over the meaning of their failure to receive signals from Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

As a quick summary, this is what the panel of experts said:

There is no news.

We haven't done very much.

We should search vast numbers of stars...

We've thus far probed only a hundred-trillionth of the search space. We still need to cover the other 99,999,999,999,999 hundred trillionths before we can say there are no alien signals to be found.

We'll detect an alien communique within the next two decades.

Maybe within 100 or 200 years.

Maybe 50 or 100 years.

If they really want to contact us, they can.

Think serendipity. We should all be looking for little glitches in our data.

On the web site http://www.setileague.org/photos/hits.htm "What we've seen so far" I found:

Since the launch of The SETI League's Project Argus sky survey in April 1996, our members have detected a few interesting signals. They are depicted here, along with noteworthy results of some prior SETI experiments.

As a quick summary, this is the sort of "interesting signals" that they found:

"HAARP signals reflected not off the ionosphere, but rather off the lunar surface"

"the NASA Stardust spacecraft's re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere"

a possible black hole

"Hydrogen clouds drift[ing] around in the interstellar medium"

".. the signal was most likely terrestrial interference."

".. have not seen a signal like this."

".. Computer interference is suspected."

It is clear that the SETI project is a dismal failure, because if they found something, they would be loudly bragging about it, and even if they were on the track of a good possibility, they would be talking hopefully about it. So why is half of the BOINC processing resources still aimed at SETI after all these years? Why is the SETI project so popular in spite of its persistant failure to find anything significant?

The usual defense is that it is not impossible to find signs of extraterrestrial intelligence -- it is just a hard problem that needs more time. (This in spite of such a large-scale effort since 2002.) It is surely a matter of faith to keep believing, to keep hoping, in spite of such a huge failure.

The foundation of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is the premise that life can arise spontaneously from non-life. Since no one has been able to demonstrate this in the laboratory (although many have tried), it is hoped that SETI will show that it has happened elsewhere.

Of course, the SETI faith denies the traditional faith in the Biblical account -- that God created all life. But, ironically, finding life elsewhere in the universe would not disprove the Biblical account, because the Bible tells of created life other than that in this earth. Although the Bible doesn't indicate whether these living creatures reside in this universe or another, it does tell of occasional visits to earth.

The more important issue is whether life arises spontaneously or whether life requires a creator. There are other scientific avenues for examining this issue that are more convincing than the SETI research. One avenue is based on information science -- see my blog articles:

Information From Randomness?

In The Beginning Was Information

Is Encoded Information an Essential Part of the Universe?

Another avenue is biology, which I may discuss another time.

Multiprocessing, or Distributed Computing

When I worked for ITT, sometimes I investigated new methods of sending military radio signals to improve resistance to enemy interference. To evaluate these methods without needing to build new radios, I simulated the communication process with software. It took a huge amount of computer time to try many different design values and to average the results of many experiments.

To get more experimental results faster, I decided to take advantage of the facts that (1) the company had hundreds of computers connected by a local area network, and that (2) most of the time, these computers were either idle or working at only a fraction of full capacity. So I devised a system whereby the idle time of most of these computers could be used to work on my research project.

I organized my software so that the work could be done by small tasks needing from half an hour to two hours of computer time each; and so that the results of these tasks could be consolidated to complete the work. One part of the system doled out these tasks to computers that volunteered to do work. Another part collected, checked, and reported the results, and determined how much work each volunteer computer did.

To promote the project and solicit volunteers, I sent out emails and provided a web page. The emails explained how easy it was to volunteer (just one click), and how each volunteer could enable and disable the contribution of his computer whenever he wanted. The web page displayed project progress and volunteer contributions, and provided answers to frequently-asked questions. Since origami is one of my hobbies, I offered an origami prize for the biggest contributor.

I ran several projects this way, and usually got about 100 volunteers, with about 60 to 80 computers working at one time. A project generally ran for three to four weeks. So each project was about four or five years of computing for one computer.

Most volunteers let their computer run the project overnight, and some would volunteer other computers when colleagues left on vacation or a business trip. The 'multiprocessing' (as I called it) had to shut down every Friday night, however, because that was when the entire computer network was shut down for data backup. I fixed it so that the multiprocessing would automatically restart on Saturday mornings.

I created my 'multiprocessing' system in 1998 and used it for a few years. Another division of ITT that wanted to do something similar for evaluation of weather satellite data processing asked my advice to set up their system.

But now this kind of computing is done world-wide on the Internet on a much larger scale, and it's now called 'distributed computing'. United Devices established their distributed computing system in 2001. University of California, Berkeley launched BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) in 2003. BOINC has over 540,000 active computers worldwide working on hundreds of projects.

Now my computer runs BOINC in its spare time, supporting four projects:

PrimeGrid: prime number research

Cosmology at Home: cosmological research

Rosetta at Home: protein folding research

World Community Grid: drug research

Most BOINC projects are non-profit, and there is no monetary compensation to those who volunteer their computer's run-time. But all BOINC projects issue credits as a kind of thank-you that is proportional to the amount of work contributed. And there are web sites that provide statistics and graphics that summarize a contributor's credits and ranking, like this: