The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: April 20, 2008

Official News page 5


SETI@HOME FED2 TEAM

by Hazed

Speaking of player sites, Gandolf has set up something really unusual: he's created a Fed2 Team as part of the SETI@Home project.

SETI stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It is the scientific effort to detect intelligent life outside Earth. One approach uses radio telescopes to listen for radio signals from space which occur on narrow bands. These don't happen naturally, so a detection would provide evidence that extraterrestrial technology exists.

The signals from radio telescopes contain a lot of noise, both from celestial sources and from the receiver's electronics, and interference from man-made signals such as TV stations, radar, satellites and so on. Modern radio SETI projects analyze the data digitally to try to find signals that may come from intelligent aliens.

Since none of us have radio telescopes in our back gardens, what can it possibly have to do with us? Well, it's all about computing power. Analyzing the signals uses a lot of power, which traditionally has to be done on an expensive super-computer. However, using distributed computing, whereby many internet-connected home computers join together to form a "virtual supercomputer", SETI@Home lets ordinary people join the effort.

For more info, and to join Gandolf's Fed2 team in the search for intelligence, go to http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/team_display.php?teamid=116569.


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