SETI@home is a scientific experiment that harnesses the power of hundreds of thousands of 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. There's a small but captivating possibility that your computer will detect the faint murmur of a civilization beyond Earth.

SETI@home uses the largest telescope in the world, the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, to continuously scan the sky for radio signals. So far, nearly all of the sky visible from the Arecibo telescope has been scanned at least once. As time progresses, Arecibo passes over the same point several times. This benefits Seti@home, because it allows us to distinguish between signals that occur due to radio frequency interference and actual extraterrestrial signals. After the data are recorded onto tapes at Arecibo, they are shipped back to the Seti@home lab in Berkeley, California. The data are then broken up into workunits, which are sent out to the client program for analysis.

I have been running SETI for over 3 years now and have contributed over 25 years of CPU time to the project.

In March of 2003 the SETI team reobserved 200 of the most promising locations identified by SETI@home users to date. I identified 2 of those candidates.

• SAHMb13+18ia
• SAHMn07+14aj

Here is a link to pictures from a trip to Arecibo which include some really cool pictures of the telescope and the electronics and machinery that make the whole thing work.

As of 12/15/2005 my stats were

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