SETI Live

From setiquest wiki

SETI Live is a citizen science application that is a collaboration between SETI Institute, TED, Science Channel and Zooniverse. Jill Tarter announced the collaboration on March 12th 2011 on her TED blog and said "millions of people will soon be able to search the ATA data in hopes of finding a signal."^[1]

SETI Live was launched February 29th 2012 by Jill Tarter at the annual TED conference in Long Beach, California.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]} SETI Live launched with an interesting collection of dual-beam test signals and switched to a live dual-beam ATA signal feed several days later.

SETI Live replaced the setiQuest Explorer app as the setiQuest project's featured Citizen Science app.^[10][11]

Contents 1 Description 2 Signal classifications 3 Badges 4 Goals 5 How it works 6 Walled Garden 7 Trivia 8 References 9 External links

Description

Users will "join the search" by performing real-time analysis on 3-beam waterfall plots in the crowded RFI bands that SonATA has been skipping.^[12] Users view multi-beam waterfalls, highlight a potentially drifting signal by clicking to apply yellow markers, and finish by applying a classification tag. Users can comment on signals, favorite them, and build collections. Hash #tags are supported in comments and a trending keywords tag cloud is on the main talk page.

It was announced that "the real-time analysis of community members will actually decide what the ATA observes next."^[13]

Signal classifications

The original 4 signal classification options were:

• vertical
• diagonal
• erratic
• broken
• delete - removes the yellow marks

On March 12th 2012 a two tier signal classification system was introduced. An option is selected from the first tier of classifications:

• broken
• continuous
• parallel
• delete - removes the yellow marks

Then an option is selected from the second tier of classifications:

• erratic
• wide
• narrow
• delete - removes the yellow marks

Eliminating the original diagonal option makes sense because drift rate is selected by the two yellow marks connected by a line. The new classification options allow for 3 x 3 = 9 combinations which should improve the science logging aspect of the project.

Badges

Badges are awarded for reaching different achievement levels. A viral marketing technique of allowing users to share achievements on Twitter and post to Facebook is integrated into SETI Live. Here is a list of the seven different badges, a description of their icons, and the Twitter sharing quote text:

• registration - Saturn - "is now a SETI Citizen Scientist."
• classify - spiral galaxy - "just classified their ### th target"
• follow up - star? -
• post to_talk - two talk bubbles - "is discussing the possibility of life beyond Earth."
• returner - lightning bolt - "is now a SETI Seeker."
• signals marked - oscilloscope waveform - "has marked ### signals from the ATA."
• ET found - alien -

Some of badges are re-awarded after performing an action several times. Most levels are multiples of 5 such as { 5, 10, 25, 50, 75, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000, ... }. Note that after completing the on-line tutorial it appears that the alien badge is awarded. This is just an example of what a badge award looks like. The actual alien badge is reserved for when ET is found.

Goals

Initial science goals:^[14]

1. Users help map out RFI so that SETI Institute can train computers to efficiently ignore it
2. Maybe a group of Citizen Scientists will spot a non-RFI signal partially hidden in the RFI (ET?).

How it works

How SETI Live's signal discovery works:

1. The receiving dishes observe signals from distant stars
2. The signal is sent to SETI Live
3. SETI Live creates pictures of the data called Waterfalls
4. The Waterfall pictures are quickly scruitinized for signal by the Citizen Scientists (you!)
5. SETI live gathers info about any signals found and sends the info to the ATA
6. The ATA re-observes, trying to detect the same signal and determine what it is
7. (repeat)

Walled Garden

Like other Galaxy Zoo projects, a major part of SETI Live is its own integrated forum and comment system. Signal comments are limited to 140 characters and forum comments are unlimited in size. There was concern^[15][16] before the launch that this walled garden approach would keep users on the SETI Live website and not encourage participation in the parent setiQuest project. Due to this one-way flow, SETI Live is not expected to increase traffic to the setiQuest forum.

Trivia

• The Zooniverse spent 8 months searching for a TED funded SETI Scientist position.^[17][18]
• The original SETI Live design was going to emulate^[19] baudline's 3-channel RGB color mixing overlay spectrogram feature^[20] but this was canceled due to visibility concerns. The human eye is not as good at distinguishing the color blue as it is with red and green, so seeing signals in the blue beam would be more error prone.
• During SETI Live's first day of operation 10000 users signed up and 80000 signals were classified.
• On launch day the ATA was "snowed in"^[21] and archive test signals were shown to users.
• The baudline signal analyzer was used to extract, shape, and create the dual-beam test signals that were used during the first several days of the launch.
• First tuning. SonATA begins with the observation frequency range (1420- 1730 MHz).
• SETI Live reached one million classifications and 32000 total people on March 12th 2012 which is 12 days after launch.
• The repaired third beamformer was returned to service and began serving 3 beams to SETI Live on March 16th 2012. Previously only single and dual beam signals were being processed.
• In April 2012 two SETI Institute officials commented that the setiQuest community and data aspect of the project had both been "outsourced" to SETI Live.^[22]
• Waterfall plot AGC processing was changed on May 3 2012 to give the displays a more consistent brightness scale. ^[23]
• Second tuning on May 18 2012. SonATA changes its observation frequency range (~1200 - 1300 MHz).^[24]
• Map observation groups (GSL_) to dates.^[25][26]
• In June 2012 two prominent setiQuest members were banned from SETI Live for debating the value of human signal recognition vs. automated software RFI detection algorithms. ^[27][28]
• Followups were to go live on June 14 2012 but the SETI Live website went down. Gremlins or AWS outage?^[29][30]
• SETI Live reached three million classifications and 65790 total people on August 3rd 2012 which is 156 days after launch.
• Third tuning on August 9 2012. SonATA changes its observation frequency range (~3800 - 4200 MHz).^[31]
• The SETI Live website was improved on November 13 2012 and followups are supposed to be working this time. ^[32][33]
• The cost to develop and operate SETI Live is estimated to be $400K. ^[34]
• SETI Live's TED funding runs out in January 2013. ^[35]
• It's December 4 2012 and followups are still not working. ^[36]
• December 11 2012, late by 6 months but followups are now operational. ^[37]

References

1. ↑ http://blog.ted.com/2011/05/12/the-search-for-cosmic-company-goes-on/
2. ↑ http://www.seti.org/node/967
3. ↑ http://www.tedprize.org/join-the-search-on-setilive/
4. ↑ http://www.npr.org/2012/02/28/147590627/seti-site-up-again-and-searching-for-intelligent-life
5. ↑ http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2108098,00.html?xid=gonewsedit
6. ↑ http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/01/BAEH1NDDB7.DTL
7. ↑ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seti-institute/seti-live_b_1310878.html
8. ↑ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46578217/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.T0_ArmNSS8U
9. ↑ http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-02-29/news/chi-want-to-help-find-et-now-you-can-20120229_1_signals-array-of-radio-telescopes-alien-life
10. ↑ http://setiquest.org/forum/topic/seti-live-and-alien-encounters
11. ↑ http://setiquest.org/forum/topic/community-meeting-2012-02-28#comment-3105
12. ↑ http://setiquest.org/forum/topic/community-meeting-2012-01-17
13. ↑ http://corporate.discovery.com/discovery-news/science-ted-and-seti-ask-the-question-are-we-alone/
14. ↑ http://setiquest.org/blog/setilive
15. ↑ http://setiquest.org/forum/topic/seti-live-and-alien-encounters
16. ↑ http://setiquest.org/forum/topic/community-meeting-2012-01-17
17. ↑ http://blogs.zooniverse.org/blog/2011/05/02/work-at-the-zooniverse-seti-scientist-post/
18. ↑ http://setiquest.org/forum/topic/community-meeting-2012-01-31#comment-3044
19. ↑ https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=ZOONIVERSESETI
20. ↑ http://baudline.com/manual/channel_mapping.html#position
21. ↑ https://twitter.com/#!/jilltarter/status/175256211514601475
22. ↑ http://setiquest.org/forum/topic/community-meeting-2012-04-10#comment-3184
23. ↑ http://talk.setilive.org/science/discussions/DSL1003fb3
24. ↑ http://setiquest.org/forum/topic/community-meeting-2012-05-22#comment-3226
25. ↑ http://setiquest.sigblips.com/seti_live/observation_group_dates.txt
26. ↑ http://talk.setilive.org/science/discussions/DSL1003uep
27. ↑ http://setiquest.org/forum/topic/automatic-detection-and-classification-squiggles#comment-3255
28. ↑ http://talk.setilive.org/discussions/DSL1004out
29. ↑ http://blog.setilive.org/2012/06/15/followups-test-party-crashed-by-gremlins-lets-try-again/
30. ↑ http://blog.setilive.org/2012/06/15/followups-test-party-2-starts-late-but-well-keep-going-also-more-testing-next-week/
31. ↑ http://setiquest.org/forum/topic/community-meeting-2012-08-21#comment-3321
32. ↑ http://setiquest.org/forum/topic/community-meeting-2012-11-13
33. ↑ http://blog.setilive.org/2012/11/09/improved-site-on-its-way/
34. ↑ http://setiquest.org/forum/topic/community-meeting-2012-11-13#comment-3518
35. ↑ http://setiquest.org/forum/topic/community-meeting-2012-11-27#comment-3539
36. ↑ http://setiquest.org/forum/topic/community-meeting-2012-12-04#comment-3557
37. ↑ http://setiquest.org/forum/topic/community-meeting-2012-12-11#comment-3621

External links

• http://www.setilive.org
• http://blogs.zooniverse.org/seti/
• http://setiquest.org/blog/setilive
• http://setiquest.org/forum/topic/setilive-grand-opening