The traditions of Theta Sigma Tau
Team Tau SETI

The SETI@Home Project is a project in which people around the world can assist in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence by donating processing on their home computers. One downloads the client program, which is small and offers an interesting screen saver that shows the processing it is doing. Then, when one's computer is idle, it will process data obtained by the Aricibo Radio Observatory as it scans the heavens. The software looks for anything in the data that might indicate an intelligent origin.

One needs to have internet access, although it only requires access once in a while, it stores the data it is analyzing on one's computer while it works on it.

The organization records volunteers' efforts, keeping a tally of the amount of time and number of data units the volunteer has processed. Volunteers can form teams and their efforts get pooled for the team. There are no other real rewards for taking part other than the knowledge that you're participating in such a large and innovative project. However, if you happened to process a work unit that eventually turns out to provide positive proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, you get listed as a co-discoverer!

Team Tau SETI has been around for many years, the team members using their computers' idle time to assist in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

At the end of 2005 the SETI@Home system underwent a major change in the way things are done and that has had the effect of causing us to lose some members whose computers are no longer easily compatible with the project. There are currently 9 active members of the team. The other registered members, while having participated in the past, are no longer running the software.

Whatever the reason for the change in participation (and we think it likely that in most cases the member simply forgot about it or got a new computer and forgot to install the software), we'd like to encourage idle members to take part again. We would also like to invite everyone else to join the team and the search! It's free! And safe!

One can read more about the project at SETI@Home Project. There is a Team Tau SETI page on the SETI@Home site that displays the team's and members' current progress. There is also a Team Tau SETI page from the older, "classic" version of SETI@Home, which shows the progress we made before the switch.

- PWL