After three and a half years and “more than a million years of computation by more than 4 million computers worldwide, the SETI@home screensaver that crunches data in search of intelligent signals from space has produced a list of candidate radio sources that deserve a second look.” Although this is definitely a milestone, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the project is on the verge of a breakthrough in its search for extraterrestrial life. In fact, UC Berkeley physicist Dan Werthimer, SETI@home chief scientist, says, “I give it a one in 10,000 chance that one of our candidate signals turns out to be from ET.” Still, if nothing else, “SETI@home has performed the most sensitive and detailed SETI sky survey to date, has demonstrated the power of the Internet for doing scientific distributed computing, and has allowed the general public to participate directly in an exciting research project.”
