Is this for real?? Are scientists really trying to have me believe that we are about to make contact with aliens? This sounds like a study to determine what people will and will not believe! Can anyone explain to me in simple terms what they are talking about?
In simple terms: SETI@Home is a project that has been going on for several years (since the late nineties, if I’m not mistaken) whose purpose is to look for astronomical radio signals that might, just might, be signs of an alien civilization trying to communicate with other civilizations. They have detected scores of “candidates” for such signals — basically, blips that the computers said were worth going back & looking at again — of which this is one. However, there are things about this particular signal (and others) that make the scientists running this project doubt that it’s really an alien signal. You can read the article linked to at the bottom of the Wikipedia page for what the scientists who found the signal say about it.
How is my home computer able to look for astronomical radio signals from outer space?
SETI@home takes a lot of radio signal data that has been recorded and distributes it to all the people who join the project. It runs like a screen saver; when you aren’t using your computer, the SETI client uses it to examine the bit of data that SETI@home has sent you. After your computer is done with one block of data, you are sent another. This isn’t real-time searching for aliens, just using lots of computers’ free time to help break down the vast amount of data.
If you wish to participate in SETI@Home, go here. By default, it runs as a screensaver when your machine is idle but if you have a very fast machine, you can set it to run continuously in the background.