SETI@home Going into Hibernation

UC Berkeley has announced that the volunteer computing part of SETI@home will stop distributing work and go into hibernation on March 31. Two reasons were cited for this action:

1) Scientifically, they have reached point of diminishing returns; basically, they analyzed all the data they need for now.

2) Managing the distributed processing of data is labor intensive. The priority now is to focus on completing the back-end analysis of the results they already have, and writing this up in a scientific journal paper.

It’s important to note that SETI@home is not disappearing. The web site and message boards will continue to operate.

Hopefully, other UC Berkeley astronomers will find uses for the huge computing capabilities of SETI@home, for SETI or related areas like cosmology and pulsar research. If this happens, SETI@home will start distributing work again.

People currently running SETI@home on their computer are encouraged to attach to other BOINC-based projects. Or to use Science United and sign up to do astronomy. It’s possible to stay attached to SETI@home but users won't get any jobs until there are new applications.

SETI@home is a scientific experiment based at UC Berkeley. It uses internet-connected computers in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Volunteers run a free program on their computer that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data. SETI@home has been in operation for 20 years and more than 5.2 million people have participated in the project worldwide.

Additional information about SETI@home can be found on their website here.