SETI Live Crowdsources The Search For Extra Terrestrials

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence needs your help, in a rather novel online concept called the 'SETI Live' program, allowing you to examine radio waves for alien activity.

The free-to-use service presents users from around the world with a series of radio frequency signals, which were gathered by the recently restarted Allen Telescope Array (ATA), that emanate from the Kepler field.  They've picked this field in particular because it's gathered significant traction of attention recently, as a series of earth-like planets that could support life have been spotted there.

This will already be a considerable improvement over what is already being done by SETI: using the power of human interpretation over a series of technological automations.  As soon as a user flags something they detect, the ATA will react live, with everybody being able to follow said reaction in real-time.  True, crowdsourced systems from SETI have been and gone before (SETI@home, SETI Stars etc etc); but this is the first complete system with implications felt not just by the userbase, also ATA and SETI directly.

It will be a fascinating watch for anybody interested in searching for aliens.

Source: SETILive