Well for the planets when you download the proggie it downloads a small part of code that was received by a radio telescope and during idle cycles on the cpu, this program searches the code for any "interesting" sound then sends it back to nasa or who ever and they check it out. This way users are decoding the majority of the code and nasa only has to deal with the "real" shit. And I think if your computer finds something thy name it after you! The cancer one works the same way.