Seti@home

I run a program on my computer that analyses data gathered from the Search For Extra Terestrial Intelligence project or SETI@home

I wondered if anyone else was interested in this kind of thing so here is the link to the site.
It's easy to do and certainly the seti screensaver looks pretty cool.
There are other projects you can sign up to process too but I dont have any experience of those.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/

You download a thing called BOINC then add SETI or which ever one takes your fancy and away it goes then when it's done it downloads a bit more information and processes that.

Easy to do, and helpful to those who are looking.

Zygo

That's cool.
I wonder what they'll find first?

How long have they been searching Zygo do you know? Have they found anything unusual at all or has it all been pretty quiet out there?

The Arecibo telescope where this data comes from was built in the 1960's I think but it is primarily searching for things like Quasars and pulsars as well as ultra distant galaxies. Their have been a few interesting blips and wierd noises found but so far they are proving to be mostly pulsars (a kind of spinning collapsing star)
Apparently it is stillthe best radio telescope ever made.

here is a link about one blip I found on the BBC website. It tells you a bit about the project and has a nice picture of the Telescope too.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3621608.stm

incidentally the array itself has featured in a few movies like Contact, the Bond movie Goldeneye and the 90's movie Species.

heres a really cool slightly anoraky page with loads of interesting stuff about the array.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astr...ile_000508.html

Zygo