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ET-Hunting Software Nears 3 Million Users
By SPACE.com Staff
posted: 07:00 am ET
07 May 2000
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seti_athome_010507 The popular computer software program SETI@home, which allows anyone with an Internet connection to participate in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, is expected to add its 3 millionth participant any day now. The project, based at the University of California, Berkeley, employs the computers of participants to analyze data collected by a radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, which scans the cosmos for possible incoming signals."Three million users in such a short time testifies to both the public interest in the search for extraterrestrial life and the desire for public involvement in real science," said Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, which provided start-up funding for the project. In a press release, directors of the project said the 3 millionth user will be registered sometime before May 17, 2001, which marks the second anniversary of the product's introduction. Sign-ups run at 2,000 per day and have been 10 times the original expectation, involving people from 226 countries. The project claims to have logged 650 millennia of computer time. The 3 millionth user will win a lifetime membership in the Planetary Society, a DVD copy of Carl Sagan's series Cosmos, and a SETI poster autographed by scientists involved in the project. About the project The Arecibo radio telescope is designed to capture signals extraterrestrial intelligence might send, but it gathers too much data to be analyzed by available supercomputer time. Enter the SETI@home program. Once installed on a subscriber's home computer, it poses as a screensaver that imports raw data from the telescope via the Internet and then processes it while the computer is idle. After a batch of data is completed, the computer sends it back and gets a new batch the next time the user logs onto the Internet. The idea was conceived by computer scientist David Gedye, along with Craig Kasnoff and astronomer Woody Sullivan. The project has been funded by the Planetary Society, Cosmos Studios, the University of California, Sun Microsystems, Fujifilm Computer Products, Quantum Corp. and Paramount Pictures. The software is available at http://planetary.org or http://setiathome.berkeley.edu.Click here to learn about the SETI Institute, which searches for and studies the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence.
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