So far, the researchers at Berkeley have only been able to analyze small portions of the data. But all experiments must come to an end, and is no exception. It marks the culmination of an unprecedented 20-year experiment that engaged millions of people from almost every country on earth. They called it Tuesday, researchers at the Berkeley SETI Research Center announced they would stop distributing new data to users at the end of March.
A distributed supercomputer sounded outlandish at the time, but within four years, Gedye and his collaborator, computer scientist David Anderson, had built the software to make it a reality. What if the world’s personal computers were linked together on the internet to create a virtual supercomputer that could help with SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence? The network would be able to sort through the massive amounts of data being collected by radio telescopes, seeking signals that might point to an alien civilization around another star. In 1995, the computer scientist David Gedye had an idea that could only originate at a cocktail party.
