Newbie questions you've probably heard a million times ...

Greetings Earthlings,
I'm new to the world of SETI, and I'm looking not only for ET, but some
answers I can't find at the SETI website.
For example : I can see what things like pulses, gaussians, triplets and
peaks ARE, but what do they really MEAN ? What IS a "good" signal ? Does
(say) a pulse of power X, or a triplet of power Y really MEAN anything
worthwhile ? Will I ever actually know if I find ET ? What does SETI do with
my returned work units ? etc., etc., etc.
So far I've found lots of "stuff", but it means bugger all to me, how do I
know I'm not quite literally just wasting my time looking at pretty graphs
?!
I'd really appreciate if some of you long timers out there would be kind
enough to answer some of these questions - it'd make me feel a lot happier
about what I'm doing, after all, I'm sure we'd all like to see some sort of
results, I'm certainly no different !
Lurkey.

"Lurkey" skrev i meddelandet
u...

Greetings Earthlings,
I'm new to the world of SETI, and I'm looking not only for ET, but some
answers I can't find at the SETI website.
For example : I can see what things like pulses, gaussians, triplets and
peaks ARE, but what do they really MEAN ?


What IS a "good" signal ?

A good signal is a signal that reappears the next time the telescope points
in the same direction. The signal should have the same frequency when it's
corrected for earths rotation around it's axis and the rotation around the
sun. (barycentric frequency)

Does (say) a pulse of power X, or a triplet of power Y really MEAN
anything worthwhile ?

Usually not. There are 4,848,533,930 spikes, 443,058,001 gaussians,
621,821,650 pulses and 581,264,953 triplets in the database. Most of them,
if not all, are just noise or signals from earth.

Will I ever actually know if I find ET ?

No, not until Berkeley tells you so. You will not be able to see if the
signals are repeating. Berkeley has a page with users who have helped them
finding signal candidates.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/Candi...userlist1.html


What does SETI do with my returned work units ? etc., etc., etc.

The data is entered into a database and compared with other data.
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/process_page/


So far I've found lots of "stuff", but it means bugger all to me, how do I
know I'm not quite literally just wasting my time looking at pretty graphs
?!
I'd really appreciate if some of you long timers out there would be kind
enough to answer some of these questions - it'd make me feel a lot happier
about what I'm doing, after all, I'm sure we'd all like to see some sort
of results, I'm certainly no different !
Lurkey.