SETI Brings Space Exploration to Home Macs

The SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project is now offering a Macintosh version of its SETI@Home client, an idle-time screen saver application that crunches data (in 340K “work units” downloaded from SETI’s servers) collected from the Arecibo radio telescope. Faced with an enormous amount of data collected (about 35 GB per day), SETI is hoping that the search for distant communication signals will be speeded by the distributed computing power of thousands of personal computers. The SETI@Home client, a 210K download, can be run as a screen saver or stand-alone application and requires a Power Macintosh with at least System 7.5.5 and 32 MB of RAM. If you think it’s taking too long to discover signs of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, now’s your chance to do something about it at home.