Bimble
Bimbling along ...
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/
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
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