posted 04-13-2003 11:17 AM               

If you want to have a bit of fun and make your computer useful for space reseach check out using, Google, The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence at Home or go to http://setiathome.berkleley.edu. What is does is link you to the headquarters of the SETI project which is a large radio astronomy program searching for radio signals etc. that indicate intelligent life activity. Its an enormous project and even the big university number crunchers can only examine a small portion of the data collected. I believe this project involves two separate arrays of radio telescopes. About two years ago, one of these bright guys got the idea that it would go faster if they could tap into PC CPUs when they were not being used by the owner. So what you can do is download a screensaver onto your computer. When online it is assinged and downloads a specific data set to analyze, and this sreensaver/program kicks in when your computer goes to screen saver. I have had this downloaded on a P4, Windows 2000 and a P3, Windows 98. Absolutely no problem with my computers thus far (three weeks), so I think it is a well written program. When the data are analyzed, it takes about 30-40 hours on a P4 and 100 or so on a upper end P3. When finished, the next time you log in, it prompts you to hit a little radio telescope on your lower right task bar, the summarized data is sent to UC Berkeley and your computer is assigned another task. You do not have to be online continuously for it to function. Its colorful and has information only pilots and radio guys can truly love. It does seem to indicate with green markers what appears to be consistent signals in your data set, which are visualized on the screen.

I don't know about intelligent life, or the "I Love Lucy of the Next Galaxy" but they are learning a lot about the universe (pulsar locations that were unknown, black holes etc) as well as good info on spuriou signals transmitted from earth and satellites. Probably picked up noise from kids with small FM transmitters.

posted 04-14-2003 12:28 AM               

Updates on the project make the Times once a year or so; last I saw about 4 million people around the world used the screen saver. I wonder if it is the most popular individual/ downloadable screensaver (except those that come with the computer)?

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-Ben

posted 04-14-2003 05:48 PM               

Its a shame that most people don't appreciate the true benefits of the space program in futhering knowledge and developing new useful technologies. Your typical emergency room has just about all the types of life support and telemetry devices that the moon walkers had, only today more powerful. Kind of makes you wonder where we would be without Mercury, Apollo, Gemini and the current Shuttle and Space Station projects.