SETI opens up its data to 'citizen scientists' to help find aliens

London, Feb 12 (ANI): Reports indicate that SETI (Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute has opened up its data to 'citizen scientists' to help in its quest for finding aliens.

According to a report in New Scientist, all that people have to do is to log on to SETIQuest.org, which went live on February 10.

The site's launch was announced at the TED 2010 conference currently underway in Long Beach, California.

SETIQuest is the product of astronomer Jill Tarter's TED Prize wish.

After being awarded the TED Prize last year, Tarter was given the opportunity to make a single wish before an auditorium full of the top names in technology and design.

Tarter wished that they would "empower Earthlings everywhere to become active participants in the ultimate search for cosmic company".

With SETIQuest, Tarter and TED are making that happen.

The website will make vast amounts of SETI data available to the public for the first time.

It will also publish the SETI Institute's signal-detection algorithm as open source code, inviting brilliant coders and amateur techies to make it even better.

"With available cloud storage and processing resources, we can provide digital signal processing experts and students with a lot of raw data ... and invite them to develop new algorithms that an find other types of signals that we are now missing," the website explains. (ANI)