The search for aliens is something that interests a lot of people, but did you know until recently it was possible to help in the search for aliens using your own computer? The project was known as SETI@home and int this video were going to have a look at what the project was and how it worked.

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First we need understand what SETI is. SETI stands for the Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence. It's a scientific endeavour dedicated to seeking evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth. Scientists involved in SETI use various methods, such as listening for signals from space or studying celestial objects, to detect signs of extra-terrestrial civilizations.
SETI@home was a project launched by the University of California in May 1999. The project aimed to analyse radio signals captured by the Arecibo Observatory and the Green Bank radio Telescope. A radio telescope is a specialized instrument used to detect and collect radio waves emitted by celestial objects in space, providing insights into the universe's structure and composition.

To analyse the huge amount of radio wave data captured, SETI needed a huge amount of computing power, but because of lack of funding they couldn’t afford to buy their own hardware to process and analyse the data. That’s where SETI@home comes in.

SETI@home distributed a screensaver program that looked like this that volunteers could download and install on their personal computers. When a computer was idle or not in use, this screensaver would activate, utilizing the otherwise unused processing power of the computer to analyse chunks of radio telescope data.

The data was divided into small work units, which were sent to individual computers for analysis. Each computer would examine these units for specific patterns or signals that might indicate artificial or intelligent origin, as opposed to natural cosmic sources.

Participants' computers processed these work units and sent the results back to the SETI@home servers. This collective effort created a distributed computing network, effectively creating one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world at that time, utilizing the computational power of millions of volunteer devices.

The project processed vast amounts of data collected by radio telescopes, and while there were occasional interesting signals that prompted further investigation, none resulted in a verified detection of extra-terrestrial intelligence. Many signals detected by the project were of natural origin or were terrestrial interference.

SETI@home officially ended its data analysis operations in March 2020. The decision to shut down the project was not due to lack of interest or support but rather a strategic shift in how SETI data would be processed and analysed, moving away from distributed computing towards AI and machine learning.

Do you believe SETI@Home was a good use of resources or simply a waste?

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