Definition: SETI

(Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) A huge grid computing project on the Internet that takes advantage of unused processing time in users' computers to analyze radio telescope data. The purpose of SETI@home, which is administered by the University of California at Berkeley, is to pick up communications from other planets. If narrow-bandwidth radio signals were to be detected, scientists maintain that these unnaturally occurring communications would be evidence of extraterrestrial sources.

Get Involved!
You can participate by downloading a screen saver that converts idle time into computations. Data are saved every couple of minutes and sent back to the SETI website at periodic intervals. Initiated in 1999, millions of enthusiastic users have since generated well over a billion results. See grid computing.