After more than 20 years of inviting the public to help in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), the distributed computing project SETI@Home is shutting down.
Since it was released to the public in May 1999, over 5 million people have participated in the project. It was one of the pioneers of distributed computing, in which volunteers donate processor cycles to allow complex problems to be solved through the use of thousands of computers. Similar projects have sprung up for various functions in recent years, including the popular Folding@Home project which focuses on disease research and which could help fight the current coronavirus outbreak.
The data analyzed through SETI@Home includes observational data from the Arecibo radio telescope and the Green Bank Telescope, including data from the Breakthrough Listen project. The data was collected “passively” while the telescopes worked on other scientific projects, then SETI@Home used volunteer computer power to analyze it for signals which could indicate the presence of life.
read more (digital trends)
Since it was released to the public in May 1999, over 5 million people have participated in the project. It was one of the pioneers of distributed computing, in which volunteers donate processor cycles to allow complex problems to be solved through the use of thousands of computers. Similar projects have sprung up for various functions in recent years, including the popular Folding@Home project which focuses on disease research and which could help fight the current coronavirus outbreak.
The data analyzed through SETI@Home includes observational data from the Arecibo radio telescope and the Green Bank Telescope, including data from the Breakthrough Listen project. The data was collected “passively” while the telescopes worked on other scientific projects, then SETI@Home used volunteer computer power to analyze it for signals which could indicate the presence of life.
read more (digital trends)
