IS ANYBODY OUT THERE?
The Search for Radio and Optical Signals from
Extraterrestrial Civilizations

Dan Werthimer
University of California, Berkeley
November 26, 2002

Abstract:
Werthimer will discuss the rationale behind the search for radio and laser signals from other civilizations and review the instrumentation and data analysis of the SETI@home, SERENDIP and Astropulse radio SETI programs as well as the SEVENDIP and SPOCK optical SETI Programs.

The SERENDIP IV sky survey searches for narrow band radio signals at the 305 meter Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The program uses a 168 million channel FFT spectrum analyser, running in "piggyback" mode, using a dedicated receiver to take data 24 hours a day, year round.

The SETI@home search uses desktop computers of millions of volunteers to analyse 50 Terabytes of data from Arecibo. SETI@home is the largest supercomputer on the planet, currently averaging 40 Teraflops. SETI@home volunteers have donated one million CPU years of computer time.

The upcoming Astropulse search will use distributed computing to search for uS time scale radio pulses from evaporating black holes, pulsars or ET.

The SEVENDIP optical SETI program searches for nS timescale pulses at visible wavelengths. The target list includes nearby F,G,K and M stars, plus a few globular cluster and galaxies. The pulse search utilizes Berkeley's 30 inch automated telescope at Leuschner Observatory.

The Spock optical SETI program searches for narrow band coherent signals in high resolution stellar spectra taken by Geoff Marcy and his colleagues in their search for planets at Keck observatory.

More info at http://seti.berkeley.edu