Have you ever wanted to fundamentally change humanity's perception of its place in the universe? Are you bored with your current screen saver?
If you answered yes to one or more of those questions, here's a link to a screensaver you can get from SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. The name pretty much sums up what they do: look for signs of intelligent life off our little rock. Now, the universe is a big place, and sentient beings might be anywhere in it, so SETI's tactic is to use a really really big radio telescope at Arecibo to scan the entire sky three times over in the hopes of picking up a signal. Unfortunately, this leaves a (literally) astronomical pile of data to sift through looking for a blip. However, the SETI people, being the types who spend their professional lives looking for signs of sentience from outer space, are plucky, imaginative people. Their solution: harness the computing power wasted in home computers' down time and people's penchant for having pretty pictures float across their computer screens while they're not actively using them. Viola! The Seti@Home project.
We just joined. The full details of how it works can be found here, but basically, SETI sends your computer a little bit of the telescope data over the internet. After your computer has been idle for a couple minutes (you set the exact time), instead of the flying toasters or that aquarium scene turning on, the computer switches over to working on the data analysis. A transparent cube with flashy rainbow-colored spikes floats around your screen, so you don't miss out on the pretty pictures, and as a bonus, these pictures are an actual display of the data your computer is analyizing. Much better than the morphing blob. As soon as you need your computer again, the program switches off just like your old screen saver would. When your computer is done with a chunk, it sends the results back off to SETI and fetches you a new batch of raw data.
I find myself just watching the SETI display sometimes, reluctant to interrupt it. It's a good use for computer time that would otherwise go to a scrolling message or those meaningless rainbow-colored lines. Plus it's just darned fun, and there's always that tiny chance that I'll be the one who finds the signal from out there.
1 comment:
This really is a great idea, folks. For those of you like us who like the idea of donating to charity but either cannot donate money or time right now for it, this is a very worthwhile cause -- helps SETI as much as money or your time would be to other charities. Just leave your computer on when you're done with it.
If SETI is not your bag, check out http://leovillefolding.com/ It is similar to SETI@home, but instead of using the computer's extra processing power to analyze fragments from space, it uses your computer's extra processing power to calculate protein folding. This research group is hoping to analyze the causes of, and develop treatments for Alzheimer's and other genetic disorders.
If anyone is concerned about using the computer's processing power, don't be. Your computer rarely uses more than 5% at any one time, unless you are serious graphic designers or gamers. These are good charities, folks and you don't need to give them money -- just computer power. -- Emp. Peng.
Post a Comment