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Crypto-currency craze 'hinders search for alien life'
Scientists listening out for broadcasts by extra-terrestrials are struggling to get the computer hardware they need, thanks to the crypto-currency mining craze, a radio-astronomer has said.
Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) researchers want to expand operations at two observatories. However, they have found that key computer chips are in short supply. "We'd like to use the latest GPUs [graphics processing units]... and we can't get 'em," said Dan Werthimer.
Demand for GPUs has soared recently thanks to crypto-currency mining. "That's limiting our search for extra-terrestrials, to try to answer the question, 'Are we alone? Is there anybody out there?'," Dr Werthimer told the BBC.
[...] Other radio-astronomers have been affected. A group looking for evidence of the earliest stars in the universe was recently shocked to see that the cost of the GPUs it wanted had doubled.
[...] Prof [Aaron] Parsons' radio telescope, the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionisation Array (Hera), is an American, British and South African project located in South Africa's western plains. [...] Three months ago, the Hera team had budgeted for a set of GPUs that cost around $500 (£360) - the price has since doubled to $1,000.
"We'll be able to weather it but it is coming out of our contingency budget." added Prof Parsons. "We're buying a lot of these things, it's going to end up costing about $32,000 extra."
When the inevitable flood of cheap GPUs onto the market happens, will it be a boon to science?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @05:54PM
i mean come on. boinc and seti and the other projects that use GPUs to calculate stuff -- people are donating time to them. This sounds more like they are crying that people are wasting their electricity in a different way, one that actually might pay for itself back.
i've donated time to the various boinc projects; I don't expect to get a discount or even afford any life saving anything that they find, or even get to ride the alien space ship if my computer helped find it.
they're in no position to look in the gift horse's mouth and complain about what they find. granted the projects themselves require funding, but it is working with stuff they have at the moment. they could spend their resources on means to improve such ends rather than cry about the video card processing they aren't getting.