Over the past 15 years, astronomers have found just 136 planets outside our solar system. But now space buffs David Gutelius and Laurance Doyle say they can push that number well into the thousands by 2010.

They just need to borrow your computer for a little while.

The two entrepreneurs are currently seeking funding for a nonprofit project that would turn the home computers of every amateur astronomer in the world into one giant calculator, capable of crunching through millions of bits of cosmic data each day.

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News source: Wired News

I'd rather help find the cure for cancer, but thanks anyway.

the cure for cancer and the hunt for life have the same probability of discovery, so ill flip a coin. heads = cancer, tails = planets

...

its tails

Either way i'm not wasting power on something that there is already a cure for, and planet that we can't travel to.

Yes, cure for cancer exists.

A cure for which kind of cancer exists? And are you sure you don't mean "treatment" for cancer?

Anyway, maybe we'll find life forms out there that, (gasp), have the cure for cancer. Two birds with one stone!

the "cure" happens to be for leukemia, and it only works 52% of the time. if it doesnt have a 75+% success rate, its not a cure

anthough it is a good miracle drug since it DOESNT HAVE ANY SIDE EFFECTS

and hey maybe we'll be lucky: maybe we'll find a planet which flies through a wormhole and enters the sun's orbit, and it has life on it. thatll be great

pretty farfetched though

this sorta reminds me of SETI@home, which is fun as hell to do too....my coworker and i have an accnt at work, and we are competing..we have lots of machines going, and currently are 2nd in our group....i love the concept of home PCs clustering to help out a cause..