if you're watching the screen saver or the graphics of a work unit, how would you know if you got a hit?.

would you get any bonus credits if you got one?. j/k

Keith

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it is very doubtful that you would be able to see a "hit" just by watching the screen. To complicate matters, even if you do crunch the WU that has a candidate signal, it has to be compared to at least 2 others in this project. Then, it also must appear in the same place at different times. We are now up to at least 6 people. The Berkeley team then will have to confirm the signal using dedicated time at a telescope. If they confirm it then they will release the information to other research groups around the world so that they can also confirm the signal. ONLY after all these simplified steps, does the news get released for the general public. Even then, there is already a set of protocols to follow when announcing the signal.

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Firstly, welcome to Seti/Boinc.

There are various add-ons that can help you identify signals in your WU's. BoincLogx for example will report any "signals" found in the work units. There are other add-ons that can draw sky-maps and identify your signal location. Most WU's have such signals, identified as spikes, pulses, triplets and Gausians. But be careful, the presense of a signal is very, very unlikely to be confirmed as of significance.

The science back-end has a massive amount of work to do to correlate all the returned data. From this, selected targets are re-observed and checked to determine if the source of signal is still present and if it represents extra-terestrial intelligence.

Thus far, no confirmed signals representing extra-terestrial intelligence have been identified.

BOINC has no mechanism to add additional credits to an account from the science back-end. Credits are issued purely based on the quantity and validation of work done.

Instead, a roll of honour has been published listing those users who identified interesting signals worthy or re-observation.

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Good Luck!

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