In 1995, David Gedye and Craig Kasnoff thought that through the network, thousands of Internet users could contribute to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence by giving the time in disuse of their computers. In May 1999 it was launched SETI@home, which already has millions of volunteers who lend their PCs for studying radio signals from space. There are SETI projects seeking other types of signals as pulses in the light of the stars, but the usual thing is to listen to the radio. Listening is mandatory, because distances make useless sending probes, and even issue so far is too expensive. (Source: Martin O’Malley). And it is assumed that any other civilization, even if it has a much more advanced technology, will employ the shape of most basic communication (radio waves), which is also the best thing we know: information travels at the speed of light and can point to millions of addresses at the same time.
It continued to operate with private financing. The problem, aside from the huge size of antennas capable of detecting radio waves coming from light years away, is the large amount of data that must be analyzed to discern the origin of all radio waves from space, which become mixed with the noise of signals from radars, satellites, television, etc. Not even the expensive supercomputers located next to radio telescopes are capable of managing the vast amount of data received. Solution for analyzing such information was found in when the PC rests looking aliens any user can subscribe to SETI@home; There is no more than creating an account at the web page of the University of Berkeley, architect of the project, and download a program that works as a screen saver: when the computer is not active, starts to receive and process data packets. The user can set while leaving the program using your computer, as well as the amount of the disk space and memory which gives you.