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Peter Hogan
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SETI@home is a free screensaver program for personal 
computers that will allow people everywhere to join the 
search for extraterrestrial intelligence.  It will be available 
Monday, May 17.

=============

If ET Calls, Will You Be Listening?

Three years in the making, SETI@home ­- a free screensaver that analyzes
data from the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence -- will
be available on-line for the general public on May 17, 1999.  Developed at
University of California, Berkeley, and sponsored by the Planetary Society,
the SETI@home project will allow ordinary citizens worldwide the chance to
actually participate in the search for intelligent life elsewhere in our
galaxy.

Louis Friedman, Executive Director of the Planetary Society, said, "With
SETI@home, anyone, anywhere could be the person who helps discover
intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.  This is a grand experiment ­
in science, in technology and in society -- and a global cooperative effort
at the frontiers of knowledge."

SETI@home is an innovative screen-saver program that will harness the spare
computing power of hundreds of thousands of Internet-connected personal
computers around the world to crunch data from the radio telescope at
Arecibo, Puerto Rico.

SETI@home is led by David Anderson, a Visiting Scientist at UC Berkeley,
and by Dan Werthimer, director of UC Berkeley's SERENDIP SETI program.  
The project was conceived by computer scientist David Gedye.

"SETI@home is a way of harnessing all the idle computers to increase our
computing capacity and our chance of finding extraterrestrials," Werthimer
said.

The project's initial funding came from the Planetary Society.  Other
sponsors include the University of California Berkeley, Sun Microsystems,
Fujifilm Computer Products, and Informix.  Paramount Pictures provided
funding to the Planetary Society for this project in connection with the
opening of the movie, Star Trek: Insurrection.

SETI@home will tap into the enormous power of hundreds of thousands of
personal computers.  400,000 people have already signed up to receive the
screensaver program once it becomes available.  They range from young
students to retirees, and from professional engineers to newcomers to the
Internet.

In the grand scheme of data crunching, SETI@home's creators think the
program has the potential to change the manner in which SETI data are
evaluated.  By the time 50,000 to 100,000 PCs are involved, the scope of
the search will rival other current SETI projects.  SETI@home may indeed
detect a signal that would otherwise be missed.

SETI@home imports SETI data from the Internet and then processes it
whenever the computer is idle. After a batch of data is completely
processed, the computer will send it back and get a new chunk of data the
next time the user logs into the Internet.


Any interesting signal is marked in the automatic processing and will be
later analyzed at the main computer site by the project scientists. If that
signal were determined to be a candidate for extraterrestrial intelligence,
it would then have to be analyzed and confirmed by independent data from
other sources before a positive identification could be made.

If such a signal is found using the SETI@home program, the person whose
computer crunched that vital bit of data will go down in history as helping
to forever alter humanity's view of our place in the universe.

The screensaver program will show, in real time, the analysis taking place
on each individual computer and will explain the significance of each
result.  In addition, participants can view maps showing where the
SETI@home project is searching and who is taking part in the project.

To sign-up, go to The Planetary Society's website at:

http://planetary.org

If you've already signed up, go to:

http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu.

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Please send comments to Cynthia Kumagawa at: 
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Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman founded the Society in 
1979 to advance the exploration of the solar system and to continue 
the search for extraterrestrial life. With 100,000 members in over 140 
countries, the Society is the largest space interest group in the world.

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