SETI@Home is a free computer program that allows you to use your own personal computer to search for extraterrestrial life. The program is run out of UC Berkeley, and is available as a free download here. SETI@Home uses data gathered from the large radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico to search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.
Since the computations done on the radio telescope data require vast amounts of computer processing power, it is cheaper for the data to be broken into chunks and distributed to SETI@Home users to be analyzed than to purchase enough large supercomputers to do the job in-house at UC Berkeley. The SETI@Home software allows the radio telescope data to be fragmented into bite size pieces that are then distributed to individual SETI@Home users to be analyzed on their personal computers. The results are then sent back to the SETI@Home team and crosschecked against the results from other users. Th end result is that the everyday computer user is able to participate in the scientific search for signs of alien intelligence in the cosmos.
The SETI@Home software is searching for three types of signals: pulses, triplets, and Gaussians. Pulses are are signals that are significantly stronger than the surrounding background noise and radiation. Triplets are repetitive pulses on the same frequency, which are not naturally occurring in anything other than a pulsar. And finally, Gaussians are signals that rise in signal strength and then fall (like a sine wive) as the signal sweeps across the field of the radio telescope. A Gaussian signal is unlikely to be nearby due to the fact that any local (i.e. terrestrial) interference would have equal signal strength regardless of what was in the observational field of the radio telescope.
Users of SETI@Home are able to watch the data being analyzed on their computers in real time, as the SETI@Home software also includes the ability to view a graphical representation of the actual calculations being performed. This makes the SETI@Home an entertaining piece of software to use as a screensaver in addition to its being a program with genuine scientific importance. I have found that the SETI@Home graphics are quite mesmerizing and meditative in nature, allowing one’s mind to wander and to be inspired about the possibilities of life elsewhere in our universe than on our own blue-green planet. The graphics will actually cause the program to slow down a bit, though, so if you are a die-hard number cruncher trying to process as much data as your computer’s processor will handle, then it is best to skip the graphics and just let SETI@Home run in the background.
While the chances of success are slim at best, SETI@Home allows your computer to be a part of the search for the answer to one of the 20th and 21st centuries’ greatest questions: are we alone in the universe? The SETI@Home software is available free and will not degrade your computers performance due to its use of spare and unused CPU processor cycles. The graphics are addicting and imaginatively stimulating, and SETI@Home can be used as a screensaver if you wish. So if you are at all interested in the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence, make yourself a part of the action by becoming a SETI@Home user.
