SETI@home.(The Arecibo Dish)

The longest-running search for ra­di­o sig­nals from al­ien civ­il­iz­a­tions is get­ting a burst of new da­ta from an up­grad­ed tel­e­scope. That means dramatically im­proved search ca­pa­bil­i­ties, proj­ect sci­en­tists say—but the full ben­e­fits will be real­ized only with pub­lic par­ticipa­t­ion. They’re are call­ing for new vol­un­teers for SETI@home, a proj­ect in which or­di­nary cit­i­zens do­nate un­used time on their com­put­ers to let the machines help comb through the search da­ta.Since it launched eight years ago, the Un­ivers­ity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berkeley-based SETI@home has signed up more than 5 mil­lion in­ter­est­ed vol­un­teers, ac­cord­ing to proj­ect sci­en­tists. It boasts the larg­est com­mun­ity of ded­i­cat­ed users of any In­ter­net com­put­ing proj­ect, they said: 170,000 devo­tees on 320,000 com­put­ers. This num­ber of com­put­ers should rise by an ad­di­tion­al mil­lion to han­dle the ex­pand­ed da­ta flow.The in­creased amount of da­ta is a re­sult of new and more sen­si­tive re­ceivers and oth­er im­prove­ments to the world’s larg­est ra­di­o tel­e­scope in Are­ci­bo, Puerto Rico, said proj­ect lead­ers.The 1,000-foot wide Are­ci­bo dish, which fills a val­ley in Puerto Rico, is part of the Na­t­ional As­tron­o­my and Ion­o­sphere Cen­ter ope­rated by Cor­nell Un­ivers­ity in Ith­a­ca, N.Y. Since 1992,the project teamz have used ra­di­o ob­serva­t­ions at Are­ci­bo to rec­ord sig­nals from space and an­a­lyze them for pat­terns that could in­di­cate they were trans­mit­ted by a civ­il­iz­a­tion.

'Ghostly' mobile phone photo

At first glance, it seems to be an ordinary snap of a group of young people.
But look more carefully and there appears to be an extraordinary, ghostly presence among them.
Peeping out between the knees of two of the girls is the face of a child...The eerie image - clear enough to show a pair of eyes, a nose, a mouth and hair - was captured by 17-year-old Matthew Summers on his mobile phone in Billingham, Teesside. This photo joins a long line of apparently paranormal snaps.