Stupid question maybe, how does it work?

Seti@home i mean? I know this probably sounds like the dumbest question ever, but as i'm clueless about this, but also interested in taking part in it, i'll ask away.

Prior to coming to ATS the only knowledge i had of SETI was the main SETI HQ where the huge dishes are. So i'm thinking that to listen out for ET signals you'd need dishes that big, and to be honest the only dishes i have here are for my tv and my cereal!

So how do i intercept signals just by having a screensaver on, with an ordinary broadband connection that is connected to just a phoneline?

Sorry if this has already been ask, but i could'nt find the answer in the tutorial.

CX.

You aren't intercepting the signals per se, but your computer is using its unused CPU time to process the signals that have been downloaded from the Dishes and then split up into little workloads spread among thousands of computers. Im not even sure if they are still doing SETI@Home?I dropped Seti@home to do Fold@home myself since it seemed to help out in a much more critical area like cancer and alzheimers research.


Pie

Thanks for that Pieman

CX.

The only stupid question is the one that is never asked.......

Fold@home sounds pretty cool!

I would like to know.
Why sine's they improved it!
Dos my computers *2 spend more time trying to get jobs
With the old seti I had jobs all the time.
And how do we know that we are doing space and not some think else?
That pic is the same one!