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| More than one million computer users around the world are helping
researchers at the University of California at Berkeley search for extraterristrial
life. They have downloaded a screen saver that analyzes radio signals
from space. The UC Berkeley program, called SERENDIP (Search for
Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations)
is piggybacking on conventional radio astronomy observations at the largest
radio telescope in the world, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.
The researchers hope that signals generated by alien civilizations will
be distinguishable from the vast amount of radio signals naturally occurring
in space.
Analyzing the data that SERENDIP collects takes massive amounts of computer power--far more than is available from even the largest supercomputer centers. In order to provide that computer power, the researchers have harnessed the unused cycles of personal computers. Computer users who want to participate download a screensaver from the program's site. While the computer is idle, the screensaver downloads a 300 kilobyte chunk of SERENDIP data for analysis and eventually sends the results back to the researchers. Once back at Berkeley, the data are combined with the crunched data from thousands of other SETI@home participants. So far, the program has provided the SERENDIP team with 50,000 years of computer time. The program is scheduled to run through 2001. |
Links:SETI@Home Program (including screensaver download site)
Links to articles about SETI@Home
NPR's "All Things Considered" (Joe Palca's story on SETI@Home will be found in program archive for August 26, 1999 in RealAudio)
SETI Institute (a separate organization also searching for extraterrestrial life which does not run the SETI@Home program but is a supporter of it)
