Over One Million Served: SETI@Home Reaches A Milestone

Developed at the University of California, Berkeley, and sponsored by thePlanetary Society, SETI@home went on-line May 17, 1999 and quickly garneredworldwide attention. The program allows ordinary citizens anywhere thechance to actually participate in the search for intelligent life elsewherein our galaxy. One million inhabitants of Earth have taken up the challenge.

Louis Friedman, Executive Director of the Planetary Society, said, "Will wediscover an alien signal -- who knows? But the search itself is a grandand exciting experiment that allows participants the chance to change humanhistory by possibly discovering that we are not alone in our universe."

SETI@home is an innovative screen-saver program that harnesses the sparecomputing power of hundreds of thousands -- now one million -Internet-connected personal computers around the world to crunch data fromthe radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico.

As of today, SETI@home users have logged an incredible 51,374.56 years -over 51 millennia - worth of computer time.

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

The project's initial funding came from The Planetary Society. Othersponsors include the University of California, Berkeley, Sun Microsystems,Fujifilm Computer Products, Quantum Corp., and Informix. ParamountPictures provided partial funding to The Planetary Society for this project.

SETI@home taps into the enormous power of hundreds of thousands of personalcomputers. Participants range in age from young students to retirees, andfrom professional engineers to newcomers to the Internet.

If a signal is found using the SETI@home program, the owner of the computerthat analyzes that vital data will merit a place in the history books asone of the humans who opened the door to an incredible new view of the cosmos.

To sign-up or help with the search, participants should go to one of thefollowing two web sites: The Planetary Society at http://planetary.org orthe SETI@home site at http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu.

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For more information about SETI@home or other SETI projects sponsored byThe Planetary Society, contact Charlene Anderson by telephone at(626)793-5100 or by e-mail at tps.cma@planetary.org. You can findadditional information on SETI on our website at http://planetary.org andat the SETI@home site at http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu.

Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman founded the Society in 1979 toadvance the exploration of the solar system and to continue the search forextraterrestrial life. With 100,000 members in more than 140 countries, theSociety is the largest space interest group in the world.