I’ve recently upgraded my main computer workstation to Windows XP (I know! Cutting Edge!) and in the process realised that at last I could update my system to use Intel Speedstep technology. The upshot of this is that my dual processor machine now looks like a quad processor in Windows, as (to cover the issue somewhat vaguely) the speedstep technology introduces two command ‘pipelines’ into each processor. I’m a bit hazy on the exact details.
Anyway, this upgrade happened to coincide with a graphics card upgrade, and getting my Power Meter back onto my workstation. The install also coincided with a decision to move away from my lazy use of an Administrator account only, and into properly separating my day-to-day use account from the administration side of things.
The net result is that I actually paid attention to the difference in power consumption between using the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project, and not using SETI. I still need to do some more tests to fully understand what I am seeing, but in the current configuration (running four separate SETI clients, one for each virtual processor), starting up the processes adds about 100Watts to the power consumption of this one machine!
If I was still running my machine 24 hours per day, that would equate to about £60 per year in electricity.
That’s not ‘free’, and it’s enough to perhaps make me reconsider how I should choose to use my available computing capacity; should I choose another project I consider more worthy, or try and ‘save the planet’, save the money, and look for ways to cut the amount of time I have the computers on at all?
By the way, I’m not making any claims here that SETI claim that running their project is financially no-cost; but I did have in my mind that this was the case.
The Case For SETI
Of the many people running their computers for the SETI project, it seems like the chances that it would be my computer that processes the signal that finds the Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence to be rather slim. Still, although the chances are slim, just like a lottery, the ‘prize’ is rather large; that being ‘the person who found life on other planets’.
I also like the nature of the project, it’s almost ‘British’ in the sense of being under-funded but making do, of cobbling together a way of achieving something, all very Heath Robinson. It’s also a chance for us people with computers, and spare computing resource, to do something useful without very much effort at all. I don’t personally take part in the ‘community’ of SETI contributors, but I know that community is there… and in a strange way I feel ‘part’ of something even if I am not chatting away in a forum or offering multi-lingual support for BOINC users or something.
Also, for the most part modern multi-threading and computer speed means that you’ll hardly notice the processes running. I’m writing this with all four cpu’s maxed out, and I’m not experiencing any processing delays at all! So why not run it, you’ll help a fun project, and have a tiny chance of being ‘the guy who found ET’!
The Case Against SETI
Even if we assume that the chance of life ‘finding a way’ on other planets is incredibly small, we must admit that there are probably enough solar systems in the universe to account for there being more than one world with intelligent life on it.
I’m not going to go to the effort of actually trying to discover what the <i>actual</i> probabilities are, but the chance of the Arecibo observatory pointing in the direction of an alien civilization at precisely the right time to pick up a signal are vanishingly small, let alone a civilisation that happens to want to be found, and happens to have their radio emitters pointing the right way at the right time. I believe there are science fiction authors who point out that:
- If ET was intelligent, he would not want to be found;
- If ET was advanced, he would not be so wasteful as to allow ‘stray signals’ dissipate into the sky.
And even if your computer is the one that processes the very first SETI work unit that shows a candidate signal, at best this will only trigger that area of the sky to be scanned again, which will involve other work units that will be processed by others. In other words, it is a community effort and really the ‘prize’ is a community one. And so what if we do find alien life? What do we plan to do with the information that there may have been life on some planet in some solar system thousands of light-years away (and therefore, at best we will only be able to know that there was intelligent life there thousands of years ago). In other words, and especially if we are anything to go by, a civilisation found will almost certainly be a dead civilisation (especially by the time we’ve developed a way to travel and survive the distance in ‘only’ a few hundred years instead of a few thousand). And that could take a long time if a low-cost airline trip to Europe is anything to go by.
…But I’m Undecided
I think there might be better things to do with my spare computing resource than spend it on looking for life elsewhere. I’m really not sure what the project aims to do with the information should it ever find a signal ‘likely to be from an ETI’. If you want to find life, look around you!
I’m not much of an environmentalist, but up until now I assumed that the processors in my computers were not of a type that would do power-saving, and on that basis, running SETI was pretty close to a no-cost proposition. But the fact that my processors apparently do consume more energy while running the project means that I have also contributed more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere through this additional electricity consumption.
My processors are Intel Xeons, which being a few years old are likely to have more power consumption overall than some of the more modern dual-core processors, but whilst one might imagine the differential these modern processors to be less (e.g. perhaps only 50W difference between running SETI and not), it is still a difference. And of course it is easy to get caught up in arguments about if it makes sense for me to upgrade my hardware to save power, when in fact the energy it took to make my current system would then be wasted.
All I’ll say for the moment is that I am reconsidering my contribution to this project, but in the meantime, I will continue to run the project work, though I will also look into other possible projects to dedicate my computers to.