SETI on your PC

[Alexander Deliyannis]

Rikste mia matia sto parakatw arthro. An sas fainetai endiaferon, pigainete
sto sxetiko link
http://www.setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu:80/home.html
http://www.setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu:80/home_greek.html
(nai, oi plirofories yparxoun kai sta ellinika)
Kalo kynigi!
xxx
alx

BBC World Service
Sunday, May 16, 1999 Published at 23:03 GMT 00:03 UK

Screening for alien life

By BBC News Online Science Editor Dr David Whitehouse

Anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can join a worldwide
search for intelligent life in space from Monday. 

The Seti at home project is a "grand experiment" allowing thousands of
volunteers to download a screensaver and a chunk of data from the world's
largest radio telescope. When your computer is idle the program searches
the data for any indication of intelligence. 

Scientists believe that the best way to find life in space is to look for
radio signals. Since 1960 there have been about 70 unsuccessful searches.

The project has a list of nearly 400,000 people from 96 countries waiting
for the final version of the software. From Monday it is available for
download from the Seti at home Website.

As the computer works on the data, the screen displays a three-dimensional
graph charting the signal analysis. Participants also can view maps showing
where the Seti at home project is searching and who is taking part in the
project.

After the computer is finished it sends the results back to Seti at home
scientists at the University of California at Berkeley and grabs another
chunk of data.

"This project lets us do Seti a lot, lot faster, with 10 times more
sensitivity and exploring more thoroughly the spectrum of radio frequencies
we scan," said Seti at home's Dan Werthimer.

Louis Friedman of the Planetary Society, which is a principal sponsor for
the project, said: "Never before has there been an opportunity for anyone,
anywhere in the world to join the scientific search for intelligent beings
elsewhere in our universe."

He added: "This is a grand experiment - in science, in technology and in
society - a global co-operative effort at the frontiers of knowledge.
Seti at home is a way of harnessing all the idle computers to increase our
computing capacity and our chance of finding extraterrestrials."

The radio data is broken down into small chunks - a 10 kilohertz range of
wavelengths in a strip of sky visible from the Arecibo telescope in Puerto
Rico - through which the screensaver program can search for patterns.

The data downloaded to each desktop computer takes up only about 250k of
computer memory, though the computer must have 32mb of RAM to run the
software. Seti at home officials say you can download enough data through the
Internet in five minutes to keep your computer analysing for several days. 



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