Looking for Aliens in All The Most Likely Places

I just got an interesting news release from the Planetary Society in my e-mail. Apparently they're going to be using some time on the Arecibo telescope this month to make reobservations on the most promising radio sources detected by the SETI@home project (which I've always thought was an exceedingly nifty idea). To quote:

Werthimer, who will head for the Arecibo observatory on March 16, said, "I believe that we will likely discover extraterrestrial civilizations in the next hundred years. Even if we don't find a signal from ET this time, I'm optimistic in the long run, since our search capabilities are doubling every year."

SETI@home is the largest computation in human history, logging a staggering 1.3 million years of computer time. The screensaver program runs on computers in homes, offices and schools worldwide, and volunteers range in age from school children to retirees.

"Whether or not SETI@home succeeds in finding evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence at this early date," said Bruce Murray, Chairman of the Society's Board of Directors, "this project has already made history. SETI@home has performed the most sensitive and detailed SETI sky survey to date, has demonstrated the power of the Internet for doing scientific distributed computing, and has allowed the general public to participate directly in an exciting research project."

Man, how cool would it be if they actually found something, huh?

(If you want more information than is in the news release, by the way, there's also a good full-length article on the Society's website.)