SETI Challenge

[matthen]

Hi everyone,

Today I set up a webpage called the SETI Challenge:
http://seti.matthen.com/
Here I have posted a signal as it might be received, and the challenge is to decode the message.
If you would like to set another challenge for the page, please get in touch.
Good luck decoding!

Matt

[rgathright]

Hi everyone,

Today I set up a webpage called the SETI Challenge:
http://seti.matthen.com/
Here I have posted a signal as it might be received, and the challenge is to decode the message.
If you would like to set another challenge for the page, please get in touch.
Good luck decoding!

Matt

I want to take you seriously, but before I click on this link... I want to see if you will reply back and give us all a little more background information.

Considering the wave of SPAM attacks lately, anything you can say would be fine at this point.

[matthen]

Sure!
It was just an idea I had recently to get people thinking about how messages might be encrypted. The signals need to be robust to noise, attention grabbing, and contain some message. And what message could be sent?
I could find a lot of research about detecting signals, but not a lot about what to expect of them.
So it's meant to be a fun way to consider this problem. You can have a go at decrypting my example signal, or make your own and send it in for others to try.

Best,
Matt

[rgathright]

Matt,
I took two graduate level math classes on Fourier Transforms and other computer algorithms. The science is real fun, once you get into it!

The problem is that no one is looking at the results produced by SETI. Yeah, they say they are but if they were then you could download the radio signals of the reported spikes. In fact, there is no easy web based utility to scan the database for signal results!

A few years ago, I logged several thousand results in a MS Access Db and created a search function using a utility that would capture these results in whole before being sent back to Berkley. The program had a screensaver mode that would show various charts for the results by date, position and strength. The problem is that SETI upgraded and I lost the ability to automatically store the files.

I wish someone would endeavor into the post analysis of SETI results. Right now it seems like the community is obsessed with crunching noise.

[matthen]

That's cool.

My background is in mathematics too.
I suppose what this little project is doing is simulating the event of finding an unmistakable signal. This could be useful for working on post-analyses of discovered spikes, as well as when we think about sending signals into space ourselves.
Do you have any reading on what analyses SETI uses to detect signals from the noise?

Matt