SETI on the SKA Dan Werthimer University of California, Berkeley

SETI historySETI history SETI todaySETI today SETI future (SKA)SETI future (SKA) Signal processingSignal processing

NOT FUNDED

Porno in space: FUNDED!

First Radio SETI Nikola Tesla (1899)Nikola Tesla (1899) –Announces “coherent signals from Mars” Guglielmo Marconi (1920)Guglielmo Marconi (1920) –Strange signals from ET Frank Drake (1960)Frank Drake (1960) –Project Ozma –one channel, MHz

Traditional SETI dogma: ultra narrow band sine waves ultra narrow band sine waves barycentric, beacons, FGK stars barycentric, beacons, FGK stars 21 cm 21 cm Future dogma: many bandwidths, frequencies, many bandwidths, frequencies, drifting signals, pulses, drifting signals, pulses, M stars, galaxies M stars, galaxies

It’s naïve to think we know how best to search today, given our history of changing SETI fashion. Multiple strategy is bestMultiple strategy is best (IR, Vis, Radio, pulse, continuous, targetted (IR, Vis, Radio, pulse, continuous, targetted sky survey…) sky survey…) Half of astronomy discoveries are serendipitousHalf of astronomy discoveries are serendipitous Examine glitches in dataExamine glitches in data Data Mining ExperimentsData Mining Experiments

OPTICAL SETI 1961 Charlie Townes Paper largely ingored until 1999 largely ingored until Cyclops report calculates radio >> optical Today’s lasers can communicate across galaxy

Optical SETI experiments Lick ObservatoryLick Observatory (Lick, Seti Institute, Berkeley) (Lick, Seti Institute, Berkeley) Harvard (targetted  sky survey)Harvard (targetted  sky survey) PrincetonPrinceton BerkeleyBerkeley

10-meter Keck Telescope Survey: 650 F8 – M5 V, IV Hipparcos V < 8.5 B-V > 0.55 (F8V) Sep > 2 arcsec Age > 2 Gyr

Keck Optical SETI – Data Mining Geoff Marcy, Amy ReinesGeoff Marcy, Amy Reines 650 stars (planet data)650 stars (planet data) Echelle SpectrometerEchelle Spectrometer Can detect 10KW narrow band signalCan detect 10KW narrow band signal (10 KW laser on 10 meter telescope) (10 KW laser on 10 meter telescope)

SETI GOAL: SkyCoverage * FreqCoverage * Sensitivity^-3/2 * Nsignaltypes solid angle vs number of nearby FGK stars? FreqCoverage vs Noctaves? Pulses vs sinewaves vs drifting vs broadband…? FreqCoverage, SkyCoverage, signal types: other telescopes sensitivity: SKA

Radio SETI Targetted Search Strategy Project Phoenix - Seti Institute Project Phoenix - Seti Institute Sky Survey Strategy Serendip, - UC Berkeley Serendip, - UC Berkeley Southern Serendip - Australia Southern Serendip - Australia Meta II - Argentina Meta II - Argentina Seti Italia - Bologna Seti Italia - Bologna

SETI Programs at the University of California

University of California, Berkeley SETI Program Graduate StudentsGraduate Students Chen Chang, Karl Chen, Paul Demorest, Nia Imara, P. Monat, A. Parsons Chen Chang, Karl Chen, Paul Demorest, Nia Imara, P. Monat, A. Parsons Undergraduate StudentsUndergraduate Students Noaa Avital, Brian Boshes, Henry Chen, Charlie Conroy, Chris Day, Daniel Hsu, Wonsop Sim, Ryo Takahashi Noaa Avital, Brian Boshes, Henry Chen, Charlie Conroy, Chris Day, Daniel Hsu, Wonsop Sim, Ryo Takahashi Astronomers and Computer ScientistsAstronomers and Computer Scientists David Anderson, Bob Bankay, Jeff Cobb, Court Cannick, Eric Korpela, Matt Lebofsky, Jeff Mock, Dan Werthimer, Rom Walton David Anderson, Bob Bankay, Jeff Cobb, Court Cannick, Eric Korpela, Matt Lebofsky, Jeff Mock, Dan Werthimer, Rom Walton Administrative Staff - NoneAdministrative Staff - None

SERENDIP IV 168M channels168M channels 100 MHz Band centered on 1420 MHz100 MHz Band centered on 1420 MHz Carriage House 1 line feedCarriage House 1 line feed Operating since 1997Operating since 1997 Photos Courtesy NAIC Arecibo Observatory, a facility of the NSF

Why Coherent Doppler drift correctionCoherent Doppler drift correction –Narrower Channel Width->Higher Sensitivity Variable bandwidth/time resolutionVariable bandwidth/time resolution Search for multiple signal typesSearch for multiple signal types –Gaussian beam fitting –Search for repeating pulses Problem: Requires TFLOP/s processing power. Solution: Distributed Computing

The Client

Statistics TOTAL RATE

in Canada 255,426 participants (0.8% of population)255,426 participants (0.8% of population) 112,000 years of computer time112,000 years of computer time 72 million work units72 million work units

Web site: 2 million hits/day 200,000 visitors/day (stats & games popular; science less popular) 100,000 children, families (including congress members and their kids) > 7,000 schools

Desired SKA Parameters Wide bandwidthWide bandwidth 1 M beams1 M beams fat beamsfat beams short dwell times (~ 100 seconds)short dwell times (~ 100 seconds)

Gaussian Candidates

BOINC Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network ComputingBerkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing –General-purpose distributed computing framework. –Open source. –Will make distributed computing accessible to those who need it. (Starting from scratch is hard!)

BOINC Projects (Berkeley)) Astropulse (Berkeley)Astropulse (Berkeley) (Oxford) (Caltech) (Stanford) (CERN) (U. Wa, (U. Wa, Berkeley)

AstroPulse Sky surveySky survey –Covers decs 0 to 30 –~3 years of data recorded so far. Good time resolutionGood time resolution –Sensitive to 0.4 µs radio pulses at 21 cm DM rangeDM range –-1000 to pc/cm 3 SensitivitySensitivity – W/m 2 peak (Coherent de-dispersion)

Piggyback ALFA Sky Survey Improved sensitivityImproved sensitivity –Tsys, integration time Uniform sky samplingUniform sky sampling –galactic plane concentration Multibeam RFI rejectionMultibeam RFI rejection Larger BandwidthLarger Bandwidth

Search for Optical/Radio Signals from Dyson Sphere Candidates| Charlie Conroy Looked for IR excess from >500 stars All stars had age > 1 Gigayear 33 stars found with 12  m excess Searched for anomalous radio detection using and SERENDIP IV databases Searched for optical pulse emission using OSETI experiment Thus far, none of the 33 sources have shown anomalous optical or radio emission Color excess using 2MASS K band data and 12, 25, 60, & 100 micron IRAS data. An excess at K-[12] is clearly visible and disappears by K-[25]. Dotted lines are Gaussian fits to the distributions. The 33 IR excess candidates have K-[12] > 3  above the mean.

‘Prelude’ Precedes SonATA In Fall 2004 For Use On The ATA-32 3 beams with 30 MHz each – PCs with accelerator cards

Future SETI Spectrometers

Moore’s Law in FPGA world 100X More efficient than micro-processors! 3X improvement per year!

Multi-Purpose FPGA-Based Spectrometer (NSF, A. Parsons) Xilinx Virtex-II 6000 FPGA Xilinx Virtex-II 1000 FPGA 256 MB DRAM Arecibo Feed Array 200 Mhz ADC Compact PCI Backplane Software 200 Mhz ADC 200 Mhz ADC 200 Mhz ADC I I Q Q Pol. 1 Pol. 2 { { 200 Aux. I/O

SETI Applications ALFA Sky Survey (300 MHz x 7 beams)ALFA Sky Survey (300 MHz x 7 beams) Parkes Southern SERENDIPParkes Southern SERENDIP JPL/UCB/SI Survey (20 GHz Bandwidth)JPL/UCB/SI Survey (20 GHz Bandwidth) SETI Italia (Bologna)SETI Italia (Bologna) Astronomy Applications GALFA Spectrometer – Arecibo Multibeam Hydrogen SurveyGALFA Spectrometer – Arecibo Multibeam Hydrogen Survey Astronomy Signal Processor – ASP – Don Backer (pulsars)Astronomy Signal Processor – ASP – Don Backer (pulsars) ATA4 Correlator F EngineATA4 Correlator F Engine Reionization Experiments (Backer (UCB), Chippendale/Ekers (ATNF))Reionization Experiments (Backer (UCB), Chippendale/Ekers (ATNF))

Filter Response: PFB vs. FFT

Next Generation Board BEE2 (2004/5) – Chen Chang 5 Xilinx XC2VP705 Xilinx XC2VP70 40 GB RAM (8 GB each chip, 13Gbit/sec/chip)40 GB RAM (8 GB each chip, 13Gbit/sec/chip) 18 10Gbit/sec infiniband ports18 10Gbit/sec infiniband ports 50 boards per rack, Tbit/sec infiniband switch50 boards per rack, Tbit/sec infiniband switch Applications:Applications: –1 GHz, 1 Gchannel spectrometer (single board) –Next Generation ATA backends (ata32 = 2 boards) –SKA imaging

B2 Module: board layout 5 compute elements on a board5 compute elements on a board Up to 400 billion CMAC/s performanceUp to 400 billion CMAC/s performance communication bandwidth:communication bandwidth: –240 Gbps on- board 360 Gbps off-board

Global Interconnects Commercial Infiniband switch from Mellanox, Voltaire, etc.Commercial Infiniband switch from Mellanox, Voltaire, etc. –Packet switched, non- blocking –24 ~ 144 ports (4X) per chassis –Up to 10,000 ports in a system –200~1000 ns switch latency –400~1200 ns FPGA to FPGA latency –480Gbps ~ 2.88Tbps full duplex constant cross section bandwidth –<$400 per port

19” 48RU Rack Cabin Capacity 40 compute nodes in 5 chassis (8U) per rack40 compute nodes in 5 chassis (8U) per rack Up to 16 trillion CMac/s performance per rackUp to 16 trillion CMac/s performance per rack 250 Watt AC/DC power supply to each blade250 Watt AC/DC power supply to each blade 12.5 Kwatt total power consumption12.5 Kwatt total power consumption Hardware cost: ~ $1MHardware cost: ~ $1M

Unified Digital Processing Architecture Distributed per antenna spectral channel processing Multiple reconfigurable backend application processing Commercial packet switched interconnect

Why you might not want SETI experiments on the SKA:

Desired SETI SKA Parameters Wide bandwidth (0.1 to 35 GHz)Wide bandwidth (0.1 to 35 GHz) 1 M beams1 M beams Wide beams (primary and synthesized)Wide beams (primary and synthesized) - compact array strongly preferred!!! (for both targetted and sky survey) (for both targetted and sky survey)

Seti Haiku

Searching for life Answers are revealed About ourselves Paula Cook, Duke University

One million earthlings Bounded by optimism Leave their PC’s on Dan Seidner

Seti.org Planetary.org Seti.berkeley.edu