Imagine.
Imagine one lonely computer number-crunching deep space radio signals collected from the Arecibo Observatory, looking for life out there.
Imagine ten computers, a thousand. Imagine over 500,000 computers working together. It's happening now, and you can be a part of it.
Want to be the one to discover extraterrestrial life? The odds are long, but they're better than hanging out at Roswell with a crystal necklace, wearing a tinfoil hat and carrying a "WELCOME TO EARTH" pasteboard sign.
The idea behind it is elegant in its simplicity. Break the signal down into small chunks and send it with the software to thousands of computers all over the world to analyze. What you lack in computing speed, you make up for in the numbers of computers involved.
HOW IT WORKS -- Contact Seti@Home and register. They will then send you the software and a chunk of the radio signal (currently 370k). The entire project takes up 686k on my computer. There are several options you can set to determine when the program will analyze the data. The default is as a screen-saver. That way the program only runs when your computer is idle. Faster computers with lots of memory may opt to have it running all the time. On my Pentium II I usually run it in the background, but shut it down if I'm doing memory-intensive work. It takes me 50 to 70 hours of CPU time to complete a data pak. When you finish a unit, your computer will upload the results and get another packet. I'm currently working on my 5th packet.
The screen saver, a visual representation of the radio signal you are analyzing, is pretty cool. It's kind of like staring into the guts of outer space. It also keeps track of your highest peaks of signal strength and a measurement of pattern analysis. The math is beyond me, but they have information on their site for people who understand that stuff.
This is a legitimate study, good science at its historical best. Check 'em out.
HISTORICAL BEST? -- Science has a rich tradition of using amateur help. Ornithology, paleontology, taxonomy, and other disciplines owe a lot to amateurs working in the field. Astronomy especially has made great leaps by the work of serious amateurs. A lot of people with a lot of telescopes have added greatly to our knowledge of the universe. The Seti@Home project is in this same spirit.
A NEW WAY OF DOING THINGS -- I am a believer in the power of the people (see We, The People). Maybe I'm stuck in the '60s, but I feel that people working together can achieve goals that cumbersome institutions cannot. I've never been much for ivory towers, especially where science and computer matters are concerned.
So here we've got individuals all over the world focused on a common project. I see aspects of this that can reach far beyond this project. Imagine what 500,000 people can do. Imagine.
This project has been out of beta testing less than a month when I write this, and it has over 510,000 computers signed up. Already they have contributed over 6,000 CPU years of computing power. I have no idea what the results may be, but it is one hell of a grand experiment.