As fascinating as the discussion of the implications of intelligent life in the Universe is, what excites me very much is the reality that you or I, or anyone with a personal computer, can actually do something practical. Something that represents true exploration in a pure sense.
This post, therefore, will contain no philosophy but merely some explanations about distributed computing and a rundown of how you can join the SETI@Home program.
Firstly, some basics. Skip ahead if you know this bit.
Distributed computing is one of those things that seems obvious now, but could never have existed until the Internet age. There are all kinds of scientifically interesting problems which involve computing tasks far beyond the ability of any single computer (even a supercomputer) to complete in a reasonable time. Processing radio telescope data to look for non-natural signals is one such task. As Doctor Who used to say, "I do wish I had the time to explain dimensional transcendentalism to you." Well, in this case, I wish I had the time to explain about a branch of mathematics called Fourier Analysis, which interestingly lays at the basis of both SETI and also the clever conversion that lets you store all those songs on your iPod as MP3 files. Trust me, it takes grunt, especially when attempted on this scale.
The pioneers who started SETI@Home in the 90's hit upon the idea of using a computer screensaver to spread such tasks across thousands of ordinary computers- using the "idle" time when the computer is not otherwise doing anything useful. The original SETI@Home screensaver was a huge hit, and the collective power of people willing to donate their otherwise wasted computer downtime to SETI@Home quickly surpassed the processing ability of any other supercomputer on the planet. Spurred by this success, the program enabling SETI@Home eventually branched out, enabling other computationally demanding projects that have arisen in the last few years, such as research investigating protein folding, long range weather prediction, or computer-aided pharmaceutical design. So for those of you who are confused about the difference between SETI@Home and BOINC, that's it. BOINC is now the name of the general purpose application/screensaver you install on your Mac or PC. Once BOINC is installed, you can "subscribe" to one or more of these worthy projects, including SETI@Home. It's simple!
1. How do I get BOINC?
Go to this link and download it. When you run the installer it will take you through the process of creating a (free) login so that your work can be credited to you and so you can choose which BOINC projects you want to participate in. You can tell BOINC to run as much or as little as you like- as a screensaver that only triggers when you're "away", only outside business hours, all the time... it's your choice.
2. I've installed BOINC and I've joined the SETI@Home program. How do I join the Christian SETI Alliance team?
Go to the SETI@Home website and log in with the details you created in step 1. Then, go to this link which is the profile page for our team on the SETI@Home website. There should be a link on this page titled "Join this team".
3. I've joined the Christian SETI Alliance team but want to know how we're doing or what my standing is within the team.
Here are a selection of links drawn from some websites that track the progress between SETI@Home users and teams who feel a little competitive.
- The standing of all members of our team ranked by overall credit.
- The Rank of our team compared to all other teams. It's worth pointing out that our team is (currently) ranked 84th in the world compared to 52,000 teams in total, placing us in the elite top tier of all contributors worldwide.
- A Web page showing the status of the SETI@Home servers- useful for when things don't seem to be working.
- A Chart of who we're about to overtake.
- Some Graphs about the recent performance of our team in terms of recent average and cumulative credit.
We look forward to you joining our team. If you've just joined up, why not visit our team forum to introduce yourself and offer some contribution to the discussion here. We'd love to know what led you to choose us. Welcome!