You have the equivalent of a supercomputer sitting there on your desk.  Millions of processing cycles go wasted while it just sits there in between your spreadsheets and document creation.  Would you like to harness that power and provide an important service to the world?  Load the BOINC software, join a project or two and begin assisting the community.

SETI Explained
SETI, or the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, is a scientific effort seeking to determine if there is intelligent life outside Earth. SETI researchers use many methods. One popular method, RadioSETI, listens for artificial radio signals coming from other stars. Seti@home is basically a RadioSETI project that lets anyone with a computer and an Internet connection participate.

Seti@home uses the largest telescope in the world, the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, to continuously scan the sky for radio signals. So far, nearly all of the sky visible from the Arecibo Telescope has been scanned at least once. As time progresses, the Arecibo Telescope passes over the same point several times. This benefits Seti@home, because it allows us to distinguish between signals that occur due to radio frequency interference and actual extraterrestrial signals. After the data is recorded onto tapes at the Arecibo Observatory, they are shipped back to the Seti@home lab in Berkeley, California. The data is then broken up into work units (WUs), which are sent out to the BOINC client program over the internet for analysis.

SETI@home project
Seti@home is a scientific experiment that harnesses the power of millions of Internet connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can participate by running the free BOINC client program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data. There is the small but very captivating possibility that your computer will detect the faint murmur of a civilization beyond Earth!

After you have installed the BOINC software, create an account and join the SETI@HOME project by going to the following web site: http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/. Then go to the copeSETIc team page and click on Join this team. You will need to get your "password" e-mailed to you, so click on the "click here" link after entering your e-mail address in the box provided. When you get your password, return to the Join this team link and sign up properly. If for some reason you need to do a search for the team, then enter 'copeSETIc' (Case independent) in the search box and hit "Search" (for some reason, if you do a team search it must be all in lower case). Once you've joined your processing stats will get added to the team total.