Originally published 21 June 1999
It is a marriage made in heaven.
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) and personal computers.
A huge mass of data looking for cheap processing.
Start with 35 gigabytes of radio signals collected every day by the big Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, across broad bands of frequencies and a good chunk of the sky. Maybe somewhere in that hiss of celestial noise is a signal of intelligent origin, something that cannot be explained by any known non-intelligent natural process.
To find the message in the noise — if there is one — will require a lot of work by a powerful supercomputer, or by thousands of not-so-powerful computers working together.
This last strategy is the goal of a new project called SETI@home, sponsored by the non-profit Planetary Society, and based at the University of California at Berkeley.
Here’s how it works. Participating volunteers download into their personal computers a data analysis program supplied over the Internet by the scientists at Berkeley. Then each day the raw data collected at Arecibo is chopped into smaller chunks and parceled out over the Internet to personal computers all over the globe.
As a machine sits idle, as most personal computers do most of the time, it will crunch numbers for SETI.
The results of the analysis are automatically sent to Berkeley when a volunteer logs onto the Net to surf or check e‑mail. SETI scientists will take a closer look at anything that looks interesting. The volunteer need do nothing, except watch a jazzy screensaver that shows the data being processed.
And here’s the kicker. If an intelligent signal is detected in your chunk of data by your computer, you will get co-credit for making what will surely be the greatest scientific discovery of all time — the discovery of non-human intelligent life in the universe.
This is not the first time networks of computers have been harnessed for a common task. SETI@home is an example of what is called distributed processing, a hot topic among computer theorists, made even hotter by the growing connective power of the Internet.
Distributed processing has obvious advantages for SETI. It harness lots of idle computer power cheaply. More to the point, it is a brilliant public relations ploy, winning lots of new friends for the SETI program and the Planetary Society. Like all publicly funded scientific research, SETI depends powerfully upon having an avid and articulate political constituency.
There is also a payoff for the rest of us: SETI@home brings science to the people.
The alienation of science from society is one of the serious problems of our time. Our civilization is based on the scientific way of knowing, but most people think of scientists as cold drones in white coats who talk in baffling languages and spend lots of taxpayer money on esoteric trivia.
Now, the proliferation of powerful personal computers and fast connections to the Internet make it possible for ordinary folks to get involved.
And not only by watching a pretty screensaver. Clever hackers will surely figure out ways to crunch the Arecibo data with programs of their own devising, maybe even one-upping the folks at Berkeley.
Wouldn’t it be something if a bright young kid working in a village in India, say, teased out an intelligent signal that no one else thought to look for.
It is easy to think of other areas of science where amateur computer buffs could make substantial contributions. An organization called Distributed.Net, which dubs itself “The Largest Computer on Earth,” has harnessed networked personal computer power to solve complex problems of cryptography and number theory.
Artificial intelligence is another topic that lends itself to distributed processing. Networks of personal computers resemble the neural structure of the human brain. A web of interacting computers, appropriately programmed and with access to interesting “sensory experience,” might be taught to behave intelligently.
Perhaps scientists who collect certain kinds of data with public money should be required to put their raw data on the Internet as soon as it is collected, so that anyone, anywhere, can have a crack at making discoveries. Scientists won’t like this suggestion — it’s like giving away the store before they’ve made their killing — but the integration of science into society may be a more important goal than preserving the proprietary rights of individual scientists to their data.
Meanwhile, SETI@home has been up and running on my computer for several weeks and has processed a dozen blocks of data. It’s a no-brainer on my part, like buying a ticket for the lottery, but there’s always a chance — astronomically slim though it may be — that my computer contains the chip that will hear the message from the stars.
The SETI@home project ceased sending new data packets to distributed users in March 2020, after over 20 years in operation. The Arecibo Telescope was irreparably damaged by Hurricane Maria in 2017 and was subsequently decommissioned. ‑Ed
