Climate scientists are following the lead of astronomers searching for extraterrestrial intelligence and are asking the general public to model climate change on their home computers. The SETI@home project currently has 1.3 million desktop computers processing radio signals in the search for extra-terrestrial life. Myles Allen of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK believes a similar scheme could work in climate research. "A single 50-year integration [of climate change] would take about 6 months on a personal home computer," Allen writes in the latest issue of Nature. His scheme, called Casino-21, might also help inform the public about the complex nature of climate modelling, he adds.