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This morning I received this newsletter from SETI@Home and what surprised me was the part that reads… …it was only after that they made their annual pitch for money.

I don't know about you but I rarely use my computers for more than a few hours a day and the rest of the time they are patiently waiting patiently for me to tell them to do something. So several years ago I installed BOINC and when I am not using my computers they are busily…

• searching the heavens for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI@Home)
• helping create a highly accurate 3D model of the Milky Way galaxy (Milkyway@Home)
• searching for weak astrophysical signals from spinning neutron stars (Einstein@Home)
• determining the 3 dimensional shapes of proteins that may ultimately lead to riding cures for major human diseases (Rosetta@home).
  

there are 32 other projects I could have chosen to support. but these are the ones that captured my imagination.

So I am challenging you all to install BOINC and contribute your unused CPU cycles to SETI@home and/or other project(s) that stimulate your imagination. SETI@home has greatly expanded the number of sources and amount of data they are processing and Einstein@home has been credited with finding several previously unknown neutron stars.

BOINC FAQs

• BOINC is highly configurable for the amount of resources it uses including CPU cycles, disk space used, when it does or does not run, download/upload times and limits
• properly configured you will never know that BOINC is installed or running
• BOINC is now 64 bit
• I have never had a problem with BOINC or because of BOINC

Sounds like a waste of energy.

Whether it is a waste of energy or not is all in your viewpoint.

I am always curious to learn what lies beyond the next bend in the road or over the next hill. So my viewpoint is any activity that expands our knowledge and understanding of the multiverse in which we live is a worthwhile expenditure of creativity, time, and energy.

As an example: SETI @ Home data analysis has detected multiple identical energy bursts (signals?) from a distant star. No one has yet been able to hypothesize a scenario that can explain this. Whether it is somehow a naturally occurring event, the result of intelligent activity, or a coding error the answer to this mystery could have major impact on our understanding of the universe and/or our philosophies or could lead to further discoveries.

I just watched a 2-hour documentary about the Voyager 1/2 space mission. Absolutely fascinating. What they were able to do with less computing power than a car's keyless fob (said the scientist, though I find that impossible to believe - 1972 technology).

Anyway, they managed to steer around Neptune by getting so close to it's surface that gravitational force changed Voyager's course to enable a flyby of Triton. They missed their target by 2 miles - from 3 billion miles away. The whole thing is mind-boggling to me.

My ex-colleague runs SETI @ Home on his office computer, which runs 24-hours a day. He's a Star Trek/Star Wars fan. Personally, I would not be able to allow any program to have 24-hour access to my computer, because I've been binge-watching Alias for the past two weeks and don't trust ANYBODY!!!!

I know someone who worked on the coding for the first lunar landing. They needed to optimize some of the code and were required to reduce it from its existing 7 lines to 5 lines of coding. Maybe each line was meaty, but still…