Stars Search

ET, modem home? The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence at Home, or SETI@home (setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu), wants you and your computer to help it look for life elsewhere. Backed by scientists, mainly at the U. of C. at Berkeley's famed alien-seeking project, SETI@home will officially launch next year, offering Net users a screensaver program designed to analyze outer-space radio-telescope data. Sign up as an online investigator and you'll receive weekly chunks of data to analyze, decode, and send back to SETI researchers (what, no decoder ring?). More than 100,000 erstwhile Mulders have already registered for the project, which is expected to take two years — unless we make contact before then. In the meantime, if you have a closer encounter and spot aliens cruising this planet, you can always notify the National UFO Reporting Center (www.nwlink.com/~ufocntr/). And if you get a chance, ask the little green men for their e-mail address.