SETI is an acronym for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It is an effort to detect evidence of technological civilizations that may exist elsewhere in the universe, particularly in our galaxy. There are potentially billions of locations outside our solar system that may host life. With our current technology, we have the ability to discover evidence of cosmic habitation where life has evolved and developed to a technological level at least as advanced as our own. The Institute employs scientists, engineers, administrators, technicians, public outreach specialists, educators and other support staff.

Project Phoenix is conducted at the largest available radio telescopes. These include antennas in Australia, West Virginia, and Puerto Rico. In addition to a large telescope, the SETI search requires use of a specialized digital signal processor. The Phoenix team houses this sophisticated electronics in a Mobile Research Facility (MRF), which is a $500,000, customized facility container. This container can be shipped by land, sea or air to the telescope site and plugged in. In order to quickly verify whether a signal is truly extraterrestrial or merely earthly interference, Project Phoenix always uses a second, generally smaller telescope located hundreds of miles from the primary instrument.

The SETI Institute is a non-profit corporation that serves as an institutional home for research and educational projects relating to the study of life in the universe. The Institute conducts research in a number of fields including astronomy and planetary sciences, chemical evolution, the origin of life, biological evolution, and cultural evolution. Institute projects have been sponsored by NASA Ames Research Center, NASA Headquarters, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the US Geological Survey, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the International Astronomical Union, Argonne National Laboratory, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Paul G. Allen Foundation, the Moore Family Foundation, the Universities Space Research Association (USRA), the Pacific Science Center, private industry, William and Rosemary Hewlett, Bernard M. Oliver and many other private donations. The Institute welcomes support from private foundations or other groups/individuals interested in SETI.

One form of research the SETI institute conducts is the SETI at home project. I participate in this project on my computer at home. The picture above is a screenshot. What the program does is downloads raw data from a radiotelescope off the SETI computer. Your computer then analyzes this data over and over, and sends the results back to SETI. There are hundreds of thousands of computers all doind this same thing, and, being all connected via the internet, it is a very powerful system. No conclusive evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence has been found by the SETI at home project, or by SETI itself.