Anyone participate in the Berkeley SETI@home program?

[Bimble]

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/

SETI@home is a scientific experiment, based at UC Berkeley, that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can participate by running a free program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data.

This is something a colleague put me on to. You install the program on your computer and it runs in the background, using the spare capacity of your machine to crunch data packets from the Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico (used as a filming location in the climax of the James Bond movie GoldenEye (1995)):

http://www.puertoricobygps.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/arecibo-radio-observatory-650px.jpg

I haven't found any one-eyed-one-horned-flying-purple-eater's yet, but I like the idea of hundreds of thousands of PCs being used like one giant super computer (I know, its a geek thing - some on here will get it).

You don't have to search for ET's though, there are lots of other programs you can use your spare computer power for: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php

 

[Archeress]

I did have something similar to this on a machine eons ago, but haven't used anything like it for ages.

Hugs
Archeress x

 

[Milkfloat]

As above, I did it years and years ago as part of my screensaver.

 

[LonesomeWanderer]

I did some of the folding @ home:
http://folding.stanford.edu

Protein folding seemed less scary than bumping into a little green man.....

 

[classic33]

I did some of the folding @ home:
http://folding.stanford.edu

Protein folding seemed less scary than bumping into a little green man.....

I thought they described as "little grey men" in the videos!!

 

[Tanis8472]

Yes and several others too.
Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing

Collatz
Einstein
SETI
Enigma
Milkyway
Rosetta

Haven't run it recently though

 

[Mo1959]

Used to do it a few years back but found it a bit of a resource hog on the computer.

 

[ColinJ]

Used to do it a few years back but found it a bit of a resource hog on the computer.

Just the computer, or the Internet connection too?

I wouldn't mind powering up one of my spare computers for a few hours a week but I want (say) 95% of my bandwidth leaving alone.

 

[Specialeyes]

Used to do it a few years back but found it a bit of a resource hog on the computer.

This, definitely. We used to have every machine in the company running SETI at work back in the day - its resource-hunger became a standing joke amongst staff. Maybe it was an indictment on our network or processors rather than the software, but once our faith in it was lost, it was lost.

 

[sight-pin]

I thought about that some time back, Another project i remember was 'Galaxy Zoo' (identification of the different types of galaxy) That's another i never got around too.

 

[Tanis8472]

Just the computer, or the Internet connection too?

I wouldn't mind powering up one of my spare computers for a few hours a week but I want (say) 95% of my bandwidth leaving alone.

You can limit bandwidth usage in the settings

 

[ColinJ]

You can limit bandwidth usage in the settings

In that case I might donate a few kWH of electricity a month to them. (The old computer is sitting around doing nothing so I don't care if 100% of its resources are hogged.)

 

[Tin Pot]

Did a few years ago but been through a few Macs since then.

Which program to choose though..?