Quote:
Originally posted by gr8gatzby
SETI = the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project was started by the government back in the 1950's, the disctributed computing model of SETi was started back in 1999 and is the largest distributed computing experiment in the world with over 3 million participants donating their spare cpu cycles.for those of you unfamiliar with distributed computing, the premise is that the power of the many(home computers) is greater than the power of one(supercomputers). seti@home participants download a small program that downloads data in 'work units' about 300k/ea, then analyzes them for patterns predetermined for intelligent communication. the analysis program uses only IDLE processor cycles, so you will see zero degredation in performance. if you leave your system running at night then this is a great way to utilize your proc for a good cause.
if you have any further questions follow this link for a short history of SETI, and this link explaining how seti@home works |
Yep. If you read that history page, I work with most of those people, including Dr. Frank Drake, Dr. Jill Tartar, etc.
However, it's important to keep in mind that SETI@Home and the directed search the SETI Institute conducts (see
here and
here) are two separate projects -- SETI@Home being run out of Berkeley, and obtaining data from the SERENDIP system at Arecibo Nat'l Observatory in Puerto Rico, which simply collects data from wherever the telescope happens to be looking. Whereas we (SETI) take full control of the telescope several times a year (or, starting next year, using the Allen Telescope Array we talked Paul Allen into funding!), and get real-time looks at the universe.
