Brains are better than computers at many things - pattern recognition and "knock, knock" jokes, to name but two. With SETI@dream, we can use the spare brain activity of dreamers to seek out promising sources of alien species' SETI projects.
And frankly, a night's slumber filled with Aricebo beeps and whistles is infinitely preferable to that dream where I'm being chased down Oxford Street by a thousand slavering wolves, and each wolf has my mum's face, and I look ahead to see I'm being driven towards the Centre Point tower, only it's not Centre Point, it's a 40-storey phallus, and it's falling on me, and -
Other distributed projects could use the method just as easily, of course.-- friendlyfire, Mar 23 2003 How do you know that alien species tell knock knock jokes? maby they don't need to knock because they can use telepathy, maby they are solitary and don't go and visit each others houses, maby they can walk through walls and don't have doors on their houses. croissant anyway because your dream was funny.-- Gulherme, Mar 23 2003 [reensure] Yes, it's true - I'm stuck at work, on a Sunday, looking plaintively out at a glorious spring afternoon, and my attention is naturally wandering. God bless the internet...-- friendlyfire, Mar 23 2003 I think that this would just make it easier for them to abduct me than it already is.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Mar 23 2003 Have some cheese before bed. I have heard that older cheese is better. You will have the best or worse dream of you life. It slightly depends on what you were thinking before bed.
I am sure your dream will be about your Mum or Aliens. I wish you all the look in getting the aliens dream...
Don't ask me how this works, I am sure someone else will know.-- DRudge, Mar 23 2003 I am not sure other distributed projects could use this method just as easily. The point is that humans will wake up if they hear some regular noise. I can never go to sleep if there is a ticking clock in the room, and I have trouble sleeping in hotel rooms with loud mini-bars.
So in order to be part of this project, I merely have to sleep with headphones on that have a direct feed to Aricebo. White noise is calming, but any regularity (such as a signal) will instantly wake me up.-- parky, Mar 24 2003 First, how are you going to "Distribute" the raw data? Second, how are you going to “Collect” analyzed data? Third, anyone have a magic human machine interface? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone? I seem to have lost mine.-- ato_de, Mar 24 2003 "only it's not Centre Point, it's a 40-storey phallus, and it's falling on me, and..." - it's clear that you've been watching too much "Children of Dune." Especially if the phallus had teeth.-- DrCurry, Mar 24 2003 [ato_de] 1) Volunteers download packets of raw data to their home PCs just as they do already. 2) The next morning, the sleeper mails SETI to say, "I was listening to data packet #413526807 last night, and had a dream about four-armed orange dudes telling me to prepare for the invasion of earth." SETI then scrutinise the packet more closely, and promptly shit themselves at the message, "We come in peace -your planet will be very peaceful after we kill you all and eat your lungs!" 3) Though I admit I hadn't really thought through the nuts and bolts of my idea when I first posted (the very essence of "balf-baked"), I do think parky might be on to something there, with the headphones. At the very least, we'd find oodles of new pulsars.
[DrCurry] Thank you very much - now I'll never get a good night's sleep again, for fear that my old fella will grow teeth in the night, and eat his round neighbours to the south. Aah!-- friendlyfire, Mar 25 2003 //"I was listening to data packet #413526807 last night, and had a dream about four-armed orange dudes telling me to prepare for the invasion of earth."//Ah, the dreaded Orange Jews dream-- thumbwax, Mar 25 2003 [thumbwax] I'll assume that you're referring to the ability of orange juice to confer strange dreams upon the drinker (works with cactus juice, too), rather than accusing me of somnantisemitism...-- friendlyfire, Mar 25 2003 I thought it was eating cheese to close to bedtime that gave you vivid dreams?-- dalek, Mar 25 2003 <click> I understand. I was looking for a mysterious machine human interface as to how you would get the data into the brain, but you just listen to it (preumably scaled to an audable frequency). Unfortunately filtering this through dreams, which for most humans are rather unpredictable, would give a signal to noise ratio of very close to zero.
"And frankly, a night's slumber filled with Aricebo beeps and whistles is infinitely preferable to that dream where I'm being chased down Oxford Street..." How about "...a night's slumber filled with Aricebo beeps and whistles while being chased down Oxford Street..."-- st3f, Mar 25 2003 [dalek] It's not just OJ or cheese, it's whatever you ask for when your mum declares it to be bedtime.
[st3f] perhaps some SQUID skullcap kind of deal instead, or bluetooth contact lenses to flash the signals (translated into colours) under the eyelids during sleep.-- friendlyfire, Mar 25 2003 Ah! and here I thought you wanted to use the human brain's computational prowess when really you just want some random back-ground noise while you sleep and then some sort of geek credit for a non-contribution. Fishbone.-- ato_de, Mar 25 2003 Dreaming la vida loca?-- Pericles, Mar 25 2003 But I do want to use the brain's prowess! However, since the brain is not geared up to perform straight-out fourrier analysis, we need to tailor the data stream to fit the brain's natural strengths.
Who's to say that an alien signal would be mathematical in nature? We only think it will 'cos of Carl Sagan. Chances are that the first signal we recognise and decode will be spam, anyway.-- friendlyfire, Mar 26 2003 I think your premise is good, but without a direct connection to the brain it is useless. We don't know anything about the dream state and can't rely on "dream analysis" to interpret or analyze radio signals. However, for the spam comment, I will withdraw my fishbone, but I'm not giving you a pastry.-- ato_de, Mar 26 2003 random, halfbakery