Kenneth Saint-John from OpenNote talks with Dan Werthimer of UC Berkeley, director and chief scientist of 'SETI@home'.

ON: Dan please give us a little background on yourself.

Dan: Sure, I'm the director of the SETI program here at UC Berkeley. There are other SETI programs you know. There is the Berkeley program, a Harvard program, and the SETI Institute in Australia to name a few. One of the big ones is here at Berkeley - we use the world's largest radiotelescope.

ON: Where is this radiotelescope located?

Dan: Arecibo, Puerto Rico. It's a thousand feet in diameter and can hold 10 billion bowls of corn flakes.

ON: How long have you been involved with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence?

Dan: It came about at a cocktail party up in Seattle on the 20th anniversary of the Apollo lunar landing. David Gedye and a friend of his Craig Kassnoff were talking about what could - besides the moon landing - get people excited about this sort of exploration. Something where these people would not have to be scientists or mathematicians. SETI came up in the conversation because a lot of people sort of grasp the idea of 'Are we alone? Is anybody out there?'. They went on to ask themselves, if there was a way to harness the power of the internet in regards to SETI. These guys were computer scientists they really didn't know anything about SETI. I mean they knew what it was - they had seen the movie 'Contact' and stuff. We started thinking about harnessing the power of the internet. We here at Berkeley had already done some distribute computing on campus, where we had used a bunch of computers to analyze data. But we hadn't really thought about using hundreds of thousands or millions of PCs or Macs out there around the world.

ON: Is there a lot of public interest in this SETI@home project?

Dan: It's been great! There are about 30 different countries participating. People from all over the world. All walks of life, not just computer geeks. There are kids and people who don't know much about astronomy, SETI or even computers for that matter.
We are very pleased that it's something that attracts the general public. We don't look at this as just a way to get our data analyzed. But in addition, a way to get the word out about SETI - get people interested in astronomy and have them participate in a global science project.

ON: I notice on the SETI@home site, that there are translations in over 30 different languages. Its clear global participation is very important to you?

Dan: Yes. SETI should be and is a project for the whole earth, not just one nation. If you were to come here you would see we are flying the flag of Earth.

ON: Is there any chance you will become overwhelmed with people who want to participate in SETI@home? Could there be a shortage of data to be analyzed?

Dan: No way. Earthlings are just scratching the surface, even thought we have been looking for 20 years we are just getting in the game. We liken SETI to looking for a needle in haystack. This haystack happens to be of cosmic proportions. There are millions of places to point the telescope in the sky. There are billions and billions of frequencies to look through. We have no idea what frequencies or channels an extraterrestrial civilization may be sending through. We don't know the signal type: is it AM? Is if FM? Is it pulse? There is a huge variety of factors. Though I'm very proud of our search. I would again say: earthlings are just starting to scratch the surface.

ON: This seems such a daunting task, are you optimistic as to the eventual success?

Dan: Yes, even though we are exploring just the corners of the haystack. The search is actually limited by computing power. It's the computers that do the listening. It's not Jody Foster with her head phones.
That is a great limit to have, because computing power is increasing at a phenomenal rate, you know. Doubling every 18 months or so.

When I first started in this game we built a gadget we called SERENDIP ONE, that could listen to one hundred channels simultaneously. We thought that was great. It was like having one hundred radios on your desk each one tuned to a different frequency and all listening simultaneously.
Then we built something a few years later with 65000 channels. Then 3 and 4 million channels. Now the new one can listen to 168 million channels simultaneously.

ON: That's amazing.

Dan: But still you say 168 million channels, that's amazing - how can you do that. 200 billion operations per second. Machines, equivalent to about 10 thousand Pentium computers still it's just scratching the surface. There is a huge way to go if you really want to do a systematic search. Eventually earthlings will be able to do this, because we will have more and more computing power. Moore's law about the power of computers doubling every 18 months is probably going to go on another 20 years. SETI@home is a step in that direction, where we can take advantage of harnessing the power of millions of computers via the internet.

ON: What is your projection as to the availability of SETI@home for the public?

Dan: This year, April of 99.

ON: We have already learned that the data is being collected by the world's largest radio telescope located Arecibo, Puerto Rico. How does this data make its way to you, and in turn to the home user's SETI@home program?

Dan: It would be great if it could just come over the net. But the net connection from Puerto Rico to here is just too slow. So it is actually recorded on 35 gigabyte tapes. The tapes are shipped here. When the tapes arrive here we put them on a tape drive and split them up into little pieces. So everybody who is running the SETI@home project gets a little piece of the sky. These little chunks of data are about 1/4 megabyte in size. The person running SETI@home downloads this data over the internet. It happens automatically if you like. Once you have the SETI@home screensaver and log onto the net it grabs the data, analyzes it, sends it back to Berkeley and grabs the next chunk. So you actually don't have to participate in the data analysis or the day to day sending and receiving of data. It can also sit and wait until you tell it to send or receive. It's your choice.

ON: So really it sounds like there is no learning curve involved here at all. What the home computer user needs, is the SETI@home screen saver and an internet connection.

Dan: That's it. You can go to the website right now (http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu) and sign up. Give us your email address, then in April you will receive an email saying something like: if you are still willing to participate, here is where to download the screen saver program...

The SETI program screen Click on it to view full size

Dan: Yes we have to. A lot of the stuff that comes back will be what we call RFI radio frequency pollution. This comes from satellites, airplanes radar etc. We filter all that stuff out and see if anything interesting remains. If so, we go back and look at it.

ON: Let's say after this filtration process is complete, something remains that you find interesting. What would really get your attention?

Dan: What we are looking for is a signal that repeats. So that you point the telescope - you see it. You go away - you don't see it. You go back to the place - and you see it again. A really interesting signal would be something that, as you scan over the source it grows stronger, and as you move away it grows weaker.

ON: No doubt you have something in place to deal with false or hacked data returns.

Dan: If someone attempts to trick us with phoney data we have it all on tape. We go back and check it out. The other thing is, we can't rely on just one detection. No one would believe you, if you saw just one little blip and it never happened again. Before we were to make an announcement, we would go and check it out: point the telescope there and reconfirm the signal. The next thing is: if we still see it, we have to get another group there looking and listening to make sure it's not some kind of bug in the software, the equipment or the telescope. A number of different groups with different software, different telescopes etc. would all look. If they can independently confirm it, then you can make an announcement.

ON: About this 'announcement'. What happens if a signal is detected, analyzed and re-analyzed and then independently confirmed by other groups. What is the procedure at this point? Do you notify other scientists? The government? The press? The public?

Dan: The procedure would be to send a telegram that would go all over the world at once. Not just scientists but also the public. The telegram is an 'International Astronomical Union' (IAU) telegram. It would say something like: 'Found an interesting signal. Here are the coordinates, the frequency etc. We would tell everything we know about the signal. Working it's way right now through the United Nations, is a resolution stating, that no country is allowed to jam this signal should it be detected. All different countries would have to be monitoring this signal at different times, any given place here on earth can only track a signal for a few hours because of the earth's rotation. Other people in other countries with other telescopes and equipment will have to observe it. All the information will be shared. This is an international project..

ON: Dan, what do you think the chances are of this announcement ever being made?

Dan: I think it's inevitable that our civilization will find other civilizations. As I said before: Earthlings are just now scratching the surface - just now getting into the game. But I think it will probably happen in our life time. I'm optimistic that the technology is changing fast enough, but I would not hold your breath (laughter).
SETI@home is one step in the right direction. There will be SETI@home2, 3.. maybe your kids will find it. I'm confident that the universe is teaming with life. It would be just bizarre, if we were the only ones. There are something like 400 billion stars out there. Undoubtedly some of these 400 billion stars have solar systems and planets. There is no telling how many of those have everything needed for life, a civilization capable of generating this kind of signal.

ON: One last question.. Lets say that Ms. or Mr. J Q Public is running SETI@home and the chunk of data their computer analyzed happened to be the one that turns out to be the first line of a cosmic greeting card. Will they receive recognition?

Dan: They will most likely get the Nobel Prize. But they will have to share it with us! They will be listed as co-discovers! (laughter)

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