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Is Your Work Computer Sitting Idle At Night?
Did You Know It Could Help Mankind Discover Alien Life? Here’s How!
It’s called the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, or SETI. It uses the massive Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico to scan the
Earth’s skies, listening for structured radio signals from deep space, just like in the movie “Contact”.
Odds are that you’ve heard about SETI before and you thought it sounded pretty cool. But did you realize that you can also participate in SETI?
You don’t have to spend any money or even spend much time to help. All you need to do is let your computer do all the work for you – and you
don’t even have to be anywhere nearby! Here’s how it works…
When the Arecibo radio telescope is listening for signals from space, it is also recording them to a magnetic tape. This tape is then sent to
SETI@Home in California, where the data is broken up into millions of small packets of data, called “work units”. Each work unit can take hours
to process. But Arecibo collects more data than any single supercomputer could ever hope to analyze in our lifetimes – and this is where you and
your computer come in.
Through a process called “distributed computing”, these work units are distributed over the Internet to idle computers of people all around the
world, and their computers automatically analyze the data using a simple piece of software called a “client”. When the client is finished, it sends
the work unit back to the SETI@Home database, it gets a new work unit, and repeats the process all over again. This is a process repeated
thousands of time a day all of the world, by the computers of people just like you. And all of them share a common vision of finding out once and
for all if we’re alone in the universe, or discovering if our adventure is just beginning.
Team Ars Technica Lamb Chop is a group of 5,000 people around the world, all of us just like you, that are contributing their idle computers to
the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. To date, we have processed over 6 MILLION work units for SETI@Home – that would take a single
computer over 7,000 YEARS to do! We’ve contributed more to SETI than any other volunteer group on Earth, and we’re looking for people like you
to join us. There is no cost. There is no obligation. There is no risk. There is no catch. All we ask is that you donate your spare computer cycles
to a worthy cause.
All you have to do is take 5 minutes to download the client, install it on your idle work and/or home computer, create a single free SETI@Home
account, and let your idle computer contribute to one of mankind’s greatest scientific endeavors ever. Start it up, forget about it, and go about
your normal routine. It’s so simple, yet very helpful!
If you want to know more, please stop by our website, http://www.teamlambchop.com and discover what we’re all about! You’ll become part
of a thriving community of people that do more than crunch data – we’re avid computer enthusiasts that strive to learn, share information and
advice, and push the envelope of our collective knowledge. Brilliance attracts brilliance… harness your brilliance – Crunch for Team Ars Technica
Lamb Chop!
To learn more about SETI:
SETI@Home: http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu
Team Ars Technica Lamb Chop: http://www.teamlambchop.com
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