In Aaron Vavrek’s dorm room, the universe is exploding.On his laptop, which looks like any of the thousands of other unassuming laptops in most dorms on campus, stars are wheeling in long, loose arcs across the screen. Thin red, blue and green lines trace vast trajectories, while little lines of indecipherable text dot the black of space.When asked what his computer is doing, Vavrek, astronomy sophomore, shrugs his shoulders and mutters, “I dunno — searching for aliens or something.”It turns out he’s right.Vavrek’s computer is running the program “SETI@home” — SETI stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — installed to earn extra credit for his astronomy class. The program connects his humble laptop to a network of more than a million worldwide personal computers, all of which are tied into a series of powerful radio telescopes, scouring the skies for signs of alien life.”It’s like the movie ‘Contact,'” said Brad Schaefer, Vavrek’s professor. “[The movie] is actually pretty much right.”It’s immediately obvious Schaefer is excited by the opportunities the SETI@home system provides. In fact, Vavrek said Schaefer is excited by everything.”He’s kind of crazy,” Vavrek said. “He is really, really excited about astronomy.”As he explains how SETI@home works, Schaefer fidgets eagerly in his chair, pumping his hands and tapping his toes. He speaks loudly and quickly, as if his brain was moving too fast for his mouth to keep up.While his hair is graying, his face is just barely starting to wrinkle, his bright blue eyes are sharp, flicking around the room as he fidgets.He still talks and moves like the eager graduate student who founded the “MIT Mystery Hunt,” where students at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology compete in teams to solve riddles and decipher arcane puzzles in attempts to find coins hidden somewhere on campus.While he may no longer be at MIT hunting for pennies, Schaefer is helping to unravel a cosmic mystery.”It would be the biggest discovery of the millennium,” he said.In the search for extraterrestrial life — which Schaefer simply refers to as “E.T.” — powerful radio-telescopes, like the one at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, constantly scan the horizon searching for broadcasts from other intelligent civilizations.Scientists are hoping to stumble upon radio wave communications by other sentient life-forms. Humanity has been broadcasting radio waves into space since the ’30s.”Think of it as ‘I Love Lucy’ as our galactic ambassadors,” Schaefer said. “It’s horrifying, really.”The radio-telescopes scan space for similar broadcasts — from alien civilizations.”We’re hoping to find something like ‘I Love Vululugulians,'” Schaefer teased.When scientists first developed the technology to probe deep space, they had a significant problem — no existing supercomputer could process the huge volume of data necessary to analyze it. So a team of computer scientists at the University of California, Berkeley designed the SETI@home program to process the mind-boggling amount of information.”It was the first ‘wow’ example of distributive computing,” Schaefer explained.By sending out packets of data to personal computers, the scientists were able to create a kind of collective computing that, according to Schaefer, allows it more processing power than any previous project.So Vavrek’s computer — like millions of others around the world — is taking in chunks of data from the radio-telescopes and exhaustively analyzing them for evidence of alien communication.”My mother — my mother, of all people — has it on her computer,” Schaefer exclaimed, the pitch of his voice rising dramatically. “She could find E.T.!”The program, available for free download, only runs when the computer is inactive. The observation screen acts as a screensaver, and the program only runs when the user leaves the machine idle.”We get to use all the computing cycles that are getting wasted,” Schaefer said.As soon as a user touches the mouse or keyboard, the program switches off. “You lose nothing. It’s a win-win,” Schaefer said.As far as the extra credit goes, Schaefer is dismissive.”To me, the extra credit is almost meaningless compared to what you’re actually doing,” he said. “You could find E.T.! Think about that!”Stephen Hawking, the world-renowned theoretical physicist, famously said in April, “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”But, like Hawking, Schaefer said the odds of that happening are almost non-existent.”The most likely thing to happen will be some distant contact,” he said. “But there’s no way they’re coming here.”Schaefer said the reason is simple — space is huge.If what we know about physics is true, Schaefer said, then it would take centuries for communication, let alone spaceships, to make it back and forth.While fictional aliens typically at least resemble, as he described, “humans with a lot of plastic on their head,” the professor said, aliens would likely look nothing like us.”The odds of aliens looking like us are virtually zero,” he said. “That is, unless there’s been some inter-galactic hanky-panky.”But just how good are the odds of us actually finding alien life?Schaefer thinks aliens are probably common.”In my personal opinion?” Schaefer asked himself. “We’re finding that most stars have planets around them, just like ours does. And a hefty fraction of them are in the habitable zone.”—-Contact Matthew Albright at [email protected]