SETI@home
The 1990’s was a decade of PlayStations, Britpop culture and the rise of internet activity. However, whilst I was struggling getting to grips with Lara Croft (tomb raiding of course) and listening to Blur, SETI (searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence) launched an online project called SETI@home in 1999. This meant home computer users could download raw telescopic data and transform this into something meaningful, perhaps an alien transmission? Over the years spurious candidate signals have been detected and out ruled as background terrestrial interference and dead ends. SETI@home now operates under a larger umbrella called ‘ breakthrough listen ’ as a part of the wider ‘ breakthrough initiatives ’ project. Most recently, users finally detected a signal which serves as our first signal candidate in almost 22 years of searching and listening. This is referred to as BLC1 (breakthrough listen candidate-1) and has scientists baffled for answers. The first baffling aspect of thi