A while back I wrote about the ultimate freebee and used the expression "if it sounds too good to be true it probably is." Something similar comes to mind this week... if it sounds so wacky it must be true.
Just about everyone uses a screensaver to keep images moving on the monitor while the system is idle... left long enough a static image can damage the coating on the inside of the screen. Why not use this spare time to do something useful... provided you subscribe to the possible existence of said little green men.
The proper name for what this is all about is SETI - Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence and most particularly the bright idea to come out the project. Needless to say Computers figure big time in all this because it's not quite a matter of just waiting for the phone to ring! Detection of any signal is made tremendously difficult by background noise and interference and the computer is used to filter this out. An enormous amount of signal data is collected from radio telescopes and it all requires analysing.
Funding dried up for doing this on a super computer and it was decided to try and spread the job out over many small computers. From this has evolved SETI@home... a screensaver type program downloaded from the Internet. Running in place of the conventional screensaver it uses the time to analyse a portion of the data file, also downloaded.
No money involved but a place in history if you detect THE signal.
I didn't pay a great deal of attention to the first reports I saw on the TV news but what really caught my eye was this article. As well as giving a good explanation of the technical aspects some fascinating statistics are also included... 450,000 copies downloaded and 5,000 years of computing time already clocked up!
Strange as it may sound to many this experiment is being taken very seriously around the world by a lot of people, organisations and institutions. One thing I was particularly pleased to see was that versions of the program are available for the PC, Mac and Unix.
The most complete details and download links are available from SETI's own web site. Most questions can be answered by paying a visit and even if this is not you're "thing" it is another example of the power of the Internet and how it can be used.
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