In 2003, Radio source SHGb02 + 14a was isolated by SETI @ home analysis, although it has largely been discounted by further study.

Screen shot of the screensaver for SETI @ home, a distributed computing project in which volunteers donate idle computer power to analyze radio signals for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence

SETI @ home logo

SETI @ home was conceived by David Gedye along with Craig Kasnoff and is a popular volunteer distributed computing project that was launched by the University of California, Berkeley in May 1999.

Any individual can become involved with SETI research by downloading the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing ( BOINC ) software program, attaching to the SETI @ home project, and allowing the program to run as a background process that uses idle computer power.

The SETI @ home program itself runs signal analysis on a " work unit " of data recorded from the central 2. 5 MHz wide band of the SERENDIP IV instrument.

After computation on the work unit is complete, the results are then automatically reported back to SETI @ home servers at UC Berkeley.

As of June 28, 2009 the SETI @ home project has over 180, 000 active participants volunteering a total of over 290, 000 computers.

These computers give SETI @ home an average computational power of 617 teraFLOPS.

As of 2010, after 10 years of data collection, SETI @ home has listened to that one frequency at every point of over 67 percent of the sky observable from Arecibo with a least 3 scans ( out of the goal of 9 scans ), which covers about 20 percent of the full celestial sphere.

Although other volunteering projects such as Zooniverse credit users for discoveries, there is currently no crediting or early notification by SETI @ Home following the discovery of a signal.

* SETI @ home

If a virus is detected, the window turns red and the scan is stopped, and the alert is shown once you exit the screensaver ) or a distributed computing application ( such as the SETI @ home project ).

* SETI @ home, a distributed computing project

The telescope received additional recognition in 1999 when it began to collect data for the SETI @ home project.

SETI @ home, the largest distributed computing experiment on Earth, is perhaps the Society's best-known SETI project.

* SETI @ home

The main active competition is the RoboRumble @ Home, a continuous league based on distributed computation in a similar way to SETI @ Home.

SETI @ home was released to the public on May 17, 1999, making it the second large-scale use of distributed computing over the Internet for research purposes, as Distributed. net was launched in 1997.

The two original goals of SETI @ home were:

The current BOINC environment, a development of the original SETI @ home, is providing support for many computationally intensive projects in a wide range of disciplines.

Woodruff T. Sullivan III (" Woody " Sullivan ) ( born 1944 ) is a U. S. physicist and astronomer, known primarily for his work in astrobiology, galactic astronomy, as well as for his role in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence ( SETI ).

The first SETI conference took place at Green Bank, West Virginia in November 1961.

After field tests that lasted into 1982, Suitcase SETI was put into use in 1983 with the 26-meter Harvard / Smithsonian radio telescope at Harvard, Massachusetts.

Even 131, 000 channels weren't enough to search the sky in detail at a fast rate, so Suitcase SETI was followed in 1985 by Project " META ", for " Megachannel Extra-Terrestrial Assay ".

According to Miss Tarter, in 2012 it costs around "$ 2 million a year to keep SETI research going at the SETI Institute " and approximately 10 times that to support " all kinds of SETI activity around the world.

In the SETI context, the name has been used for radio telescopes in fiction ( Arthur C. Clarke, " Imperial Earth "; Carl Sagan, " Contact "), was the name initially used for the NASA study ultimately known as " Cyclops ," and is the name given to an omnidirectional radio telescope design being developed at the Ohio State University.

The SETI Institute has been collaborating with the Radio Astronomy Laboratory at UC Berkeley to develop a specialized radio telescope array for SETI studies, something like a mini-cyclops array.

The SPSG meets in conjunction with the International Astronautical Congress ( IAC ) held annually at different locations around the world, and sponsors two SETI Symposia at each IAC.

In 2005, the IAA established the SETI: Post-Detection Science and Technology Taskgroup ( Chairman, Professor Paul Davies ) " to act as a Standing Committee to be available to be called on at any time to advise and consult on questions stemming from the discovery of a putative signal of extraterrestrial intelligent ( ETI ) origin.

Richard Carrigan, a particle physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago, Illinois, suggested that passive SETI could also be dangerous in the style of computer viruses.

Supporting the view of aggression, Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, speculates that the finite quantity of resources in the galaxy and the " explorer " nature of any civilization would cause it to be aggressive in the same way that human explorers have been historically.

* February – The Teen Age Message, an Active SETI message sent from the 70-meter Eupatoria Planetary Radar, arrives at its destination, the star HD 197076.

He is most notable as one of the pioneers in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, including the founding of SETI, mounting the first observational attempts at detecting extraterrestrial communications in 1960 in Project Ozma, developing the Drake equation, and as the creator of the Arecibo Message, a digital encoding of an astronomical and biological description of the Earth and its lifeforms for transmission into the cosmos.

Several attempts have been made to transmit signals to other stars as well, see " Realized projects " at Active SETI and Interstellar Radio Messages.

Anybody with an at least intermittently Internet-connected computer can participate in SETI @ home by running a free program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data.

BOINC has been developed by a team based at the Space Sciences Laboratory ( SSL ) at the University of California, Berkeley led by David Anderson, who also leads SETI @ home.

* 1977 – The Big Ear, a radio telescope operated by Ohio State University as part of the SETI project, receives a radio signal from deep space ; the event is named the " Wow!

It is used in the field of the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence ( SETI ).

Because it is the contact cross-section that is of interest to the SETI community, many additional factors and modifications of the Drake equation have been proposed.

The ATA is a partnership between the University of California, Berkeley and the SETI Institute .< ref >

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence ( SETI ) is the collective name for a number of activities people undertake to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life.

A small fraction of its observation time is devoted to SETI searches.

Founded in 1994 in response to the US Congress cancellation of the NASA SETI program, The SETI League, Inc. is a membership-supported nonprofit organization with 1, 500 members in 62 countries.

The current protocol for SETI Institute is to first internally investigate the signal, seeking independent verification and confirmation.

However the protocols mentioned apply only to radio SETI rather than for METI ( Active SETI ) The intention for METI is covered under the SETI charter " Declaration of Principles Concerning Sending Communications with Extraterrestrial Intelligence ".

The SETI Institute has also publicly denied that the candidate signal Radio source SHGb02 + 14a is of extraterrestrial origin though full details of the signal, such as its exact location have never been disclosed to the public.

SETI has also occasionally been the target of criticism by those who suggest that it is a form of pseudoscience.

Further, they note that the existence of intelligent life on Earth is a plausible reason to expect it elsewhere, and that individual SETI projects have clearly defined " stop " conditions.

There is an effort to distinguish the SETI projects from UFOlogy, the study of UFOs, which many consider to be pseudoscience.

Given its stability, similarity and relative proximity to the Sun, Tau Ceti is consistently listed as a target for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence ( SETI ), and it appears in some science fiction literature.

** The Big Ear, a radio telescope operated by Ohio State University as part of the SETI project, receives a radio signal from deep space ; the event is named the " WOW!