h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If the purpose of this was to attract new supporters, it worked.

I'm signed up, and since I'm on unmetered web access through cable TV not the phone, my PC is being left on more or less permanently.

Come on ET, phone GT

I'm already participating in a similar distributed processing project to find a cure for cancer. (Bossel posted a link about a year ago I think.)

I understand the mechanism, but what are the criteria for deciding if the unit contains a message from an intelligent being? Do the results go back to the server simply as "Yes" | "No" and the server would then then evaluate the positives?

Awu

There's a FAQ at the berkeley site.
Sorry I can't give you the url here, but it's in the entry.

@GT -

Thanks. That helped a little (but also just piqued my interest). It says they search for strong, narrow band signals. They use a lot of DSP and Fourier Transforms. But they didn't go into any depth.

It partially answered my questions about the returned data. I had wondered about people sending false positives (but on second thought, they would be so rare, it would be no big effort to re-evaluate them). But they even check for forged false negatives (that would be someone whose computer had detected intelligence, but wanted to hide it).

Thanks again.
Awu

You're welcome.