SETI @ home, the voluntary distributed computing project that uses the resources of your PC (if you allow it through the BOINC platform) to analyze radio signals looking for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, goes into what appears to be in effect one pension.
"From March 31 the SETI @ home voluntary calculation part will stop the distribution of the work and enter into hibernation. We do this for two reasons: from the scientific point of view, we record a decreasing performance. Basically for now we have analyzed all the data we need; for us it is a lot of work to manage the distributed calculation of data. We have to focus on complete the analysis of the results we already have and on writing entirely in a scientific journal".
Then turn off the computers or target them with other BOINC-based projects, at least after March 31st. SETI @ home is not completely disappearing, but there does not seem to be much certainty or hope about the future. "The site and message boards will continue to function. Hopefully other UC Berkeley astronomers will find uses for SETI @ home's enormous computing capabilities for SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) or related areas such as cosmology and the research of pulsars. In this case, SETI @ home will start distributing work again. We will keep you informed".
"We are extremely grateful to all our volunteers for supporting us in many ways over the past 20 years. Without you there would have been NO SETI @ home. We are excited to complete our original scientific project and look forward to knowing what will come. after".
SETI @ home allowed to analyze the radio signals recorded by the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico and the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. Managed by the Berkeley SETI Research Center since 1999, SETI @ home appealed to the computing resources of those who made them available: CPUs and GPUs were used to process small pieces of data in search of interesting and anomalous radio signals. The data, once processed, were then sent to the researchers for due analysis. In these days SETI @ Home has 1.8 million users and an average of 148 thousand connected systems.