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SETI@home, the world's largest and longest-running volunteer computing project, celebrates its tenth anniversary this month with 140,000 participants and 235,000 computers powering the search for intelligent signals from space.
SETI@home 这个世界上最大运行时间最长的计算项目，与14万志愿者、23.5万台计算机一同庆祝其10周年纪念。
No extraterrestrials have been found yet. But the project has continued to inspire and excite the public, and has spurred the development of dozens of similar volunteer computing projects.
目前还没有找到外星人。但是该项目仍然在激励着公众，并且刺激了很多较小的志愿计算项目的发展。
Launched May 17, 1999, SETI@home uses home computers to sift through radio data acquired from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. It is searching for a needle in an enormous haystack: A unique signal displaying the telltale signs of an intelligent source, hidden in the unrelenting electromagnetic noise coming from space. The project quickly attracted a worldwide following: Three months after its debut, 1 million people had signed up in 223 countries, running the screensaver software on home and work computers and in grade school classrooms, universities and even government offices.
设立于1999年5月17日，SETI@home 使用家用计算机对位于波多黎哥的阿雷西博望远镜获得无线电数据进行筛选。这是在大海中捞针啊：一个能暴露出智能信源的独特信号隐藏在来自空间持续不断的电磁噪声中。项目很快就吸引了一批世界范围的追随者：其首次亮相的3个月后已有来自223个地区的1百万人注册，在家中和办公计算机以及小学课堂、大学甚至政府办公室中运行着屏保的程序。
SETI@home最初的屏保程序
The Planetary Society was there from the very beginning. Back in 1997, when the project founders were searching frantically for sponsors to turn their concept into reality, the Society stepped forward with a founding grant that made it all possible. In the years that followed the Society worked closely with SETI@home, supporting its expansion and helping spread the word about the project to the public at large.
行星协会很早就在那儿了，回到1997年，当项目发起者正在疯狂的寻找将他们的概念变成现实的资助人的时候，协会站出来设立了专项拨款使之成为可能。在随后的年头里协会与 SETI@home 合作的很密切，帮助其扩展并在公众中广泛传播。
Over the past decade, more than 5 million people have signed up, and today, despite more than 80 competing volunteer computing projects, SETI@home still has the largest core of dedicated users. "The number of members has ebbed and flowed," said project director David Anderson, "but we have more computing power than ever, thanks to the steadily increasing power of computer processors."
在过去的十年中，超过5百万人注册，如今，尽管有超过80个志愿计算的项目在竞争，SETI@home 依旧占据着投身其中的用户的最大核心。项目负责人 David Anderson 说：“用户的数量是在衰退且流动的，但是较以往我们有更多的计算能力，这要感谢处理器持续增长的能力。”
The challenge, according to chief scientist Dan Werthimer, is scanning all frequencies, all areas of the sky, and all possible signal patterns for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. During its 10 years of operation, SETI@home has steadily improved the capture of radio signals from the Arecibo radio telescope and subsequent signal analyses. Today, more frequencies are covered and more points in the sky are scanned simultaneously.
根据首席科学家 Dan Werthimer 的说法挑战来自于要扫描所有的频率，所有的天区，以及所有外星智能可能的信号形式。在其10年的运行中，SETI@home 持续的提高了来自阿雷西博射电望远镜射电信号的捕获以及随后的信号分析能力。如今，覆盖了更多的频率范围并且空中更多的点可以被同时扫描。
为 SETI@home 提供数据的阿雷西博射电望远镜
SETI@home was conceived in 1995 when David Gedye, a software engineer now at Microsoft Live Labs, first thought about harnessing the immense, unused computing power of desktop computers around the world. He approached University of Washington astronomer Woody Sullivan, who suggested contacting Werthimer, whose SERENDIP project was already doing SETI at Arecibo. Gedye also called on the expertise of Anderson, a specialist in distributed computing. Together, the four developed a way to link desktop computers through the Internet into a virtual supercomputer able to perform complex signal analysis of Arecibo data.
SETI@home形成于1995年 David Gedye（现在是 Microsoft Live Labs 的一位软件工程师）的构想，他首次考虑利用全世界大量的台式电脑未使用的计算资源。他与华盛顿大学的天文学家 Woody Sullivan 进行了接触，Woody Sullivan 建议他联系Werthimer，Werthimer 的 SERENDIP 项目已经在阿雷西博做着SETI了。Gedye 也给分布式计算的专家 Anderson 打了电话。这四个人在一起开发了一种通过互联网将桌面电脑连接在一起成为一个虚拟的超级计算机来分析阿雷西博的复杂数据。
Since the 1999 launch, a group led by Anderson has developed software called BOINC that lets scientists anywhere create projects like SETI@home and allows volunteers to mix and match these projects on their PCs. SETI@home moved to BOINC in 2005; other projects are using BOINC to study disease-related proteins (Rosetta@home), search for gravitational waves (Einstein@home), and predict the Earth's future climate (ClimatePrediction.net).
自从1999年运行以来，由 Anderson 领导的一个小组开发了被称作BOINC的软件，它可以让任何领域的科学家建立像 SETI@home 一样的项目并让志愿者在自己的PC上将这些项目混合、协调的工作。SETI@home在2005年迁移到了BOINC；别的项目用BOINC来研究疾病相关的蛋白质(Rosetta@home)，搜寻引力波(Einstein@home)以及预测地球未来的气候(ClimatePrediction.net)。
As for the radio data that feeds SETI@home started collecting data two years ago from a new multibeam receiver at Arecibo that now brings in 14 times more data than the previous receiver with much greater sensitivity, all of it now feeding the number-crunching SETI@home computers.
2年前阿雷西博新的更加灵敏的多波束接收器所收集的射电数据量超过早先收集器的14倍，所有这些数据都提供给运算量巨大的SETI@home 计算机。
SETI@home was and remains a shoestring operation. It got off the ground with just $100,000 in funding from The Planetary Society and Paramount Pictures, and although companies like Sun Microsystems and Intel supply it with server computers, it is now funded exclusively by donations from volunteers, Werthimer said. But he and Anderson intend to keep it running as long as there is interest.
SETI@home 一直保持着低成本的运行。它刚起步的时候只有来自行星协会和派拉蒙影片公司的10万美元资金，以及像太阳微系统和英特尔所提供的服务器，如今全部靠志愿者的捐赠，Werthimer说道。但是他和 Anderson 打算只要还有人关注就让它一直运行下去。
"We're in this for the long haul," said Werthimer.
Werthimer说：“我们在很长一段时间里都会投入其中。” |
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