Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>
>Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com/> wrote:
>
>> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>>
>>>SETI just burns energy in vain in my humble opinion.
>>
>> I suggest joining the Optimal Golomb Ruler project.
>> We know that OGRs are useful. <http://www.distributed.net/ogr/>
>
>Doesn't that lead to greater pollution?
Not really. One could argue that keeping the computer on at night
in order to calculate Optimal Golomb Rulers will lead to greater
pollution, but running the calculation in the background and
otherwise using your computer as you always do has a minimal effect
on energy consumption. One could also argue that keeping your
computer on at night makes it last longer, thus delaying the day
when you have to dispose of an item that is considered toxic waste.
>Think about it, all that electricity that is consumed to barely
>contribute anything.
Wrong. Optimal Golomb Rulers are useful. Very, very useful.
You should know by now that I wouldn't make such a claim unless
it was true.
>It's as valuable as calculating pi at good levels of accuracy or
>finding large prime numbers.
Extending Pi and finding large primes are far less useful than
finding Optimal Golomb Rulers.
>The ones to get the fame are those who conduct the experiments,
>which rarely benefit humanity.
Finding Optimal Golomb Rulers benefits humanity. There is far less
fame involved in OGR work, but far more actual benefit.
Optimal Golomb Rulers are a vital tool for placing sensors and emitters
in a wide variety of situations, including X-Ray crystallography, radio
telescopy, shipboard radars, designing cellphone towers, seismography,
and a large number of similar applications. I sometimes design sensor
arrays, and if there are 24 or fewer sensors I know that my placement
is optimal, because I know what the optimal golomb ruler is. If I need
to place 25 or more sensors, I have to use the best known golomb ruler,
but I don't know whether a better placement exists, and thus my sensor
placement may be sub-optimal.
--
Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com/>
Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com/>
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