IBM Servers Now On The ET Hunt
Now that Dana Scully on "The X-Files" is the one wanting tobelieve, IBM might as well join the search for life outside of our galaxy.
Starting this week, anyone with access to an I-Series server
(formerly the AS/400) can program it to the University of
California look for evidence of intelligence beyond Earth. The
university's SETI (Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence)
program uses radio telescopes to listen for nonrandom signals in
space. In perhaps the largest ever example of distributed
computing, PCs users worldwide have downloaded SETI software,
which looks at small batches of captured signals for the ET
equivalent of "howdy." The batches are then shipped back to SETI
and more snippets are downloaded. Now IBM's I Series servers can
join the hunt. An I-Series could process a snippet in four to five hours.
"All kinds of things, including Jupiter, make noise," says Larry
Loen, an IBM I-Series senior programmer. Loen believes ET signals
exist, but realizes he might not be the one to find life in
another galaxy. "For now," he says, "customers can do something
good with the down time on their computers."
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