Party time for alien-hunters

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is getting ready for a big celebration. No, the little green men haven’t made contact. SETI’s screensaver, SETI@home, which allows people to use their computing downtime to help search the stars for alien signals, is on the verge of receiving its 500 millionth result. That’s the equivalent of nearly one million years of computing time carried out on computers across the globe. The person whose computer crunches that all-important 500 millionth calculation will win $500 and a T-shirt.