4273-07

Berkeley Radio and Optical SETI Programs: SETI@Home,
SERENDIP, and SEVENDIP

by

Dan Werthimer, David Anderson, Stuart Bowyer, Jeff Cobb, Eric Korpela,
Michael Lampton, Matt Lebofsky, Geoff Marcy, and Dick Treffers

Abstract

We present results from two radio and two optical SETI programs at the University of California, Berkeley:

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 spectrum analyzer, running in "piggyback" mode, using a dedicated receiver to take data 24 hours a day, year round.

Berkeley's most recent SETI project is SETI@home, which uses desktop computers of over a million volunteers to analyze 40 Terabytes of data from Arecibo Observatory.  SETI@home is the largest supercomputer on the planet, currently averaging 20 Teraflops.

The SEVENDIP optical search 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 other Berkeley optical SETI program searches for narrow band coherent signals in high resolution stellar spectra taken by Marcy and his colleagues as part of their on-going search for planets at Lick, Keck, and the Anglo-Australian observatories.

Keywords

SETI, spectrum analyzer, distributed computing, pulse detector.

• The paper (author Web site)

Principal Author Biography

Dan Werthimer is director of the SERENDIP SETI program and chief scientist of SETI@home at the University of California, Berkeley.  He was associate professor in the engineering and physics departments of San Francisco State University and has been a visiting professor at Beijing Normal University, the University of St. Charles in Marseille, Eotvos University in Budapest, and taught at universities in Peru, Egypt, Ghana, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Kenya.   Werthimer has published numerous scientific papers in the fields of SETI, radio astronomy, instrumentation and science education, and is editor of the book "Astronomical and Biochemical Origins and the Search for Life in the Universe".

Principal Author Affiliation

Dr. Dan Werthimer
SETI@home Chief Scientist
SERENDIP Project Director
Space Sciences Laboratory
Grizzly Peak Blvd., MS7450
University of California,
Berkeley, CA 94720-7450
USA
Tel: 510-642-6997
Fax: 510-643-2624
Email: danw@ssl.berkeley.edu 
URL: http://seti.berkeley.edu