SETI at Berkeley
SETI @ Home
SETI @ Home is the program and the project that involves millions of at home users from around the world in the important research being done and the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory. Since 1999, users have been able to run the program SETI@HOME on their home computers and recycle unused computing cycles in order to analyze data collected from radio telescopes in search of signals from other worlds. This unprecedented network of over 5 million independent SETI @ Home Volunteers constitutes the world’s largest supercomputer.
Optical SETI
The extent of the SETI project is by no means limited to scanning radio frequencies. Optical SETI employs a 30-inch automated telescope located in Lafayette, California to scan the sky for potential signals from E.T. Since its inception in 1997, Optical SETI has pioneered the use of optical technology to search for nanosecond time-scale pulses—pulses that could be generated by the powerful laser of a distant civilization.
SERENDIP 5.5
SERENDIP is an acronym for “Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations”, and like SETI @ Home, SERENDIP searches radio frequencies for signals from E.T. Although SERENDIP does not analyze data to the same level of detail as the computing power of SETI @ Home allows, it scans a broader range of frequencies. The data used in SERENDIP is retrieved from the radio telescope at the NAIC Arecibo observatory located in Puerto Rico.
CASPER
The Center for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research, or CASPER is a research group at UC Berkeley working on improving the design of radio astronomy instrumentation. Made up of both graduate and undergraduate students, CASPER aims to couple the real-time streaming performance of application-specific hardware with the design simplicity of general-purpose software. By employing reconfigurable, modular hardware building blocks and parameterized, platform-independent “gateware” libraries, many low-level implementation details can be abstracted, allowing instruments to be rapidly designed and deployed.
BOINC
BOINC is the software that makes SETI@Home possible. Downloading BOINC allows users to donate the unused CPU cycles of their personal computers to one of the scientific research projects supported by the software, in fields ranging from Astronomy to Earth Science, to Medicine. By consolidating the computing power of millions of machines, BOINC allows for a large amount of data to be processed and analyzed—all thanks to the at home volunteers.
IR Excess
The SETI project is also involved in looking at excess thermal infrared radiation.
