SETILive was an online project of

Zooniverse Zooniverse is a citizen science web portal owned and operated by the Citizen Science Alliance. It is home to some of the Internet's largest, most popular and most successful citizen science projects. The organization grew from the original Gal ...

that utilized live participants to analyze radio telescope data in real time to recognize patterns to find

extraterrestrial intelligence Extraterrestrial intelligence (often abbreviated ETI) refers to hypothetical intelligent extraterrestrial life. The question of whether other inhabited worlds might exist has been debated since ancient times. The modern form of the concept emerge ...

s (ETI's). The project ceased live operations on 12 October 2014, but still allows archival analysis.

Project

The project was launched in February 2012 as part of

Jill Tarter Jill Cornell Tarter (born January 16, 1944) is an American astronomer best known for her work on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Tarter is the former director of the Center for SETI Research, holding the Bernard M. Oliver C ...

's 2009 TED Prize Wish. SETILive uses data provided by the

Allen Telescope Array The Allen Telescope Array (ATA), formerly known as the One Hectare Telescope (1hT), is a radio telescope array dedicated to astronomical observations and a simultaneous search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The array is situated at t ...

and presents it visually so that the public can collectively search for radio signals. The project focuses on radio frequencies that automated detection systems ignore due to the prevalence of man-made noise. Jill Tarter hopes that human analysts will be able to detect low

signal-to-noise Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR or S/N) is a measure used in science and engineering that compares the level of a desired signal to the level of background noise. SNR is defined as the ratio of signal power to the noise power, often expressed in dec ...

transmissions which confuse computers. The telescope scans the zone between a known star and a known planet where liquid water is possible. This is called the

habitable zone In astronomy and astrobiology, the circumstellar habitable zone (CHZ), or simply the habitable zone, is the range of orbits around a star within which a planetary surface can support liquid water given sufficient atmospheric pressure.J. F. Kas ...

. The website displays one to three different scans of an area of space. Its energy is measured and put into a

waterfall display Waterfall plots are often used to show how two-dimensional phenomena change over time. A three-dimensional ''spectral waterfall plot'' is a plot in which multiple curves of data, typically spectra, are displayed simultaneously. Typically the cu ...

. Users must identify the areas of high energy—signals—by making two points through which a line is drawn. Users classify signals as: broken, continuous, or parallel. Users then must classify the signal as: erratic, wide, or narrow. Many of the signals are just satellites that give off energy.

Decoys

The makers of SETILive intentionally put some false positives in. Sometimes, when a user clicks "done", a red line would identify the simulated ETI signal.

References

External links

*{{Official website, http://setilive.org Search for extraterrestrial intelligence Astronomy websites Astronomy projects Human-based computation Citizen science Internet properties established in 2012

Project

Decoys

See also

References

External links