Article by Tiziano Dal Farra, IK3EUV - Udine, Italy (2000.04.14):

Who are we? Are we alone, in the Universe?

Answering these questions would mean having reached both a much more skilled technology and a definetely higher knowledge.
No doubt anyway that nowadays, on the year 2000 a.C., we can at least settle to move some steps towards "the answers". The search for intelligent life out of our solar system has been held by S.E.T.I. (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) since a while already. S.E.T.I. is a science association that coordinates some of the researches aimed to the deep space; sure nothing to do with the most known U.F.O.. If you need further infomation about S.E.T.I. have a link to the "SETI Institute" web-site or to the one of the "SETI League", or just in case you wish to know more about the kind of space-investigation that S.E.T.I. perform, than have a trip to the library downtown and pick up some books from the shelves in the sessions dedicated to Astronomy and RadioAstronomy.
Let's have some hints about RadioAstronomy: this science ain't necessarily involved in the search for ETI life, but being based on the study of space masses moving out there through the analisys of their electromagnetic emissions - meaning a sort of "radio broadcasting" - it gets close enough to our point just for the reasons cleared below.
Well, all we terrestrial beens keep living immersed (earth emissions) and all over hit (cosmic radiations) by a thick fuzz of electromagnetic wawes. All this is time to time either visible (a storm lightning) or sensable (the irradiating of the sun heat and light) as to prove how radiomagnetism is basically universally natural, some of the natural radiating events can also represent a danger to the biological life system we know: take the uranium natural radioactivity, just as an example. Nonetheless this all makes the Earth anything different from other space planets and masses. All celestial bodies do declare us their presence through the "voice" of their natural electromagnetic emissions.
There is one single event that makes our Planet different, unique and totally amazing to whatever intelligent observer -should there be any- casting his search from the deepest space to our tiny Earth: this is the "noise" of the radio-electomagnetical emissions spreaded in the space by plenty of the human activities. This means simply, that the strongest clue of the human existence on this planet is the intense electromagnetic pollution that we constantly produce: the most common "polluters" are for example the TV and Radio broadcasting plants, radar stations; some massive emissions still waveing somewhere in the space has also been the nuclear boasts of last century. These "noisy-signs" of ours have been travelling at light speed across the whole universe, and keep screaming or just wishpering our presence everywhere to an ipotetical intelligent and high-tech curious ETI listening out-there.
But... if - by contrary - WE were that intelligent-hightech-curious ET to some other "someone". I mean, as we scientifically know of our artificial emissions in the space, as we are skilled enough to recognize these sorts of electromagnetic waves and most of all we are able to receive them; than we could listen to the same "pollution" coming from other evoluted beings on some kind of "Earth" universally far from here.Well, this all is enough to settle the bases for a scientific research.

At this very point it sounds me fit to remember Guglielmo Marconi (born April, 25th. 1874 - dead January, 20th. 1937). Mr. Marconi is the first "broadcaster" and the first "receiver" on Earth, he is the father-inventor of all applications for the radio-waves. Some examples: the remote control, we all use for our television, our automatic gate, our car alarm... (was first used to shoot a gun placed on the other side of a hill around Bologna, I); but also the radio station, the mobile telephon, the GPS, the comunication satellites, the radar, the microwave are all "sons" of Marconi's genius.
He is definetely a GREAT in the modern History, no need to tell more!
One event is anyway worth to be shared: at Marconi's death all and every radio broadcasting station on Earth (in 1937 these were not so many as today, they otherwise were already quite a few) kept a 2 minutes lasting Radio Silence as a tribute and sign of deep respect and memory. During those glorious minutes the planet Earth had been again after milions of years the silent space-mass that was before Marconi's advent. That primordial Silence, too, is maybe still travelling across the universe. After those tremendous 2 minutes passed by, the Earth started back creeping, buzzing....radio-existing and has ever stopped again so far. (It won't be that fine the next moment the Earth will fall into absolute Silence...!)
Anyway, thanks to Marconi we are traceable in space and can also trace some other broadcasting beings from out there. It's right for the search of the clues of the existence of an ET-Marconi that the SETI@home project had been settled. The search for ET intelligence-signs in the space is vivid in its ups and downs since a while already. One of the hardest obstacles to the "ups" was the huge computing power needed to elaborate the inimmaginable mass of data collected from the space-listening.

It's also worth to point out that plenty other researches do face the same obstacle, think about the Genoma Project by Nobel prize winner Prof. Renato Dulbecco, for example: http://www.ornl.gov/TechResources/Human_Genome/
The major lack, than, is focused not on information but more on the skill to "digest" it. Another all but least trouble to be solved for the succeeding of these researches is the "money issue": to acheive such a computing power as the one required for the aboves would cost far beyond the reachest funds available can pay. Some years ago a wit guy thought about the perfect solution to the "computing" problem: the turning point was simply to connect many computers together, "glueing" this team of calculating chips in a sort of big brain, with neurons spreaded on the earth but able to work together on the same thougt. This sounded great, fit and even cheap, but none knew how to connect the "neurons", yet.

Three years ago, a handful of math-scientists at the Berkeley University (California) developed a math-software aimed to fractionate, distribute through Internet to as many "machines" as possible and finally elaborate a given mass - no matter how massive - of data. As a test they chose to face the computing of the information coming from the Arecibo (Puerto Rico) Radio-Telescope: targeted out to the space like a big ear listening to electromagnetic noises from the Universe.
Yes! dear. We've been talking about the radio-activity and about investigating in the space searching for ET-broadcasts. And..Bingo!
This is the perfect link of Radio Astronomy-Marconi-ET-computing power: this is S E T I @ h o m e .
At Berkeley they hoped to connect at least 50,000 "machines" in order to reach the computing power needed. They mostly counted on friends, collegues, relatives, university mates; how could they immagine the "w.w.w. magic"? Believe it or not after only 4 (four) mounths from the appearing of the project on Internet (May, the 17th, 1999), over 1,000,000 computers were linked together and worked on the S@H data!

At this moment (April, 14th. 2000) the "neurons" are more than 1.826.842 (accounts). The computers are many more, of all types and power and still growing, and growing, and growing...
222 are the Countries represented: where electric power supply, a computer and a telephone line are available, there S@H runs!
The total computing time developed in all during the 10 months life of the project (CPU time): more than 220,734 years.
Number of floating-point operations (FLOPs): 184,632 e+20 (at the rate of 12.69 TeraFLOPs per second).
This goes on 24hrs a day.

Note, afterall, that this computer-Internet-scientific event has occured and keeps happening day by day without ad-pressing by the official popular Media!
The S@H-Client - that is the software that lets your PC receive-elaborate-and give back to the Berkeley server every work unit (WU) - works like a screensaver. Meaning that it calculates while you are pausing from the sessions on your computer. All you have to do is allow your PC to connect to the Berkeley server at the end of a WU in order to send the elaborated one and get a new WU. Isn't it genial?
The gratest thing about S@H is that it lets 'common people' like you and me take active part to a project, to an idea! I like to think that S@H will be the first of plenty other "......@home" projects, where all of us will help to get higher knowledge, or approach to the healing of some severe disease, or ...... whatever could be fine for us and the rest of the Earth.

Does this all makes you shiver inside or simply arises your curiosity? Than connect here:
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/

You will say: 'I was there!'.
 

Note: This article was sent to Dr. Anderson, Berkeley, on 27/03/2000. Revised on 14/04/2000.

Some Guglielmo Marconi Link:
http://www.wpi.edu/~bigbri/ph1121.html
http://www.nobel.se/laureates/physics-1909-1-bio.html
http://www.marconiusa.org/
http://www.alpcom.it/hamradio/
http://www.clubmarconi.com.au/guglielm.htm
My personal S@H references :
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/stats/team/team_17574.html
My explanatory pages on "S@H" in the Web (in italian language) to spawn the Project :
http://macprof.macity.it/archivi/seti/percheseti.html

Thanks to my S@H mate Caminiti Giuseppe from Hannover (D) who inspired me for this lines.
Thanks to Loredana Trevisani, who helped me for this english version ...and many thanks to all the other S@H friends, supporters and to those who will become our mates as well.