The SETI Institute is starting a new program to bring the general public into the heart of the search for extraterrestrial radio signals. Unlike SETI@home, an earlier effort to engage the public built on commandeering personal computers to help analyze data obtained in SETI observing sessions, SETIlive asks people to spend time working with the raw data of a session themselves, hunting for that telltale signal from an alien civilization.
As in the program that has found evidence of a higher rate of star formation in the Milky Way than was previously thought, which was the subject of yesterday's blog post, the driver of SETIlive is the ability of the human brain to pick out patterns amidst complexity. SETI computers likely miss many potential finds-- which sort of negates the whole point of doing such research.
It's nice to know that even in these days of hot shot computers and ultra-sophisticated software there is still a place for the human brain in the cockpit.
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