Search for space aliens spawns computing experiment By Janet Kornblum Gannett News Service When you're asleep or taking a walk or eating lunch, you can search for space aliens, as in extraterrestrials. Actually, your computer can. Discover the thrill of knowing that you're part of a planetary supercomputing experiment called SETI@home. The concept, for those who are new to it, is simple. Download software that serves as a screen saver from: http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu When you're not using your computer, the SETI software crunches data for the project from radio signals coming from the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico. SETI@home just reached an important milestone - 500,000 years of computing time. That's the equivalent of one computer running for half a million years, or half a million running for one year. More than 2.5 million people have downloaded software and collectively created a supercomputer that is two times faster than IBM's ASCI White supercomputer. IBM's machine can do 12 trillion calculations a second. When SETI@home launched in May 1999, the idea was to keep it going for two years. But it has been so successful that a sequel is in the works to study the Southern Hemisphere. Arecibo covers the Northern Hemisphere. The project's success has sparked about a half-dozen similar ''cluster computing'' projects, such as fightAIDS@home, based on harnessing the power of idle home computers. SETI@home is only partly about finding aliens. It's also about computing power and public education. ''We have been able to get people excited about a real science project,'' said project director David Anderson. http://www.flatoday.com/news/space/stories/2001a/jan/spa010901a.htm == Unsubscribe instructions: http://www.talkspace.net/mlists/setiathome.html This list sponsored by talkspace.net: building space communities online. Mailing list services provided by klx.communications -- www.klx.com
