I read a story on the BBC website yesterday about the discovery of a rare object in space with the help of a network of home computers around the world. The Einstein@Home project connects half a million personal computers, “allowing them to be used for searching through scientific data.”
“Einstein@Home is a program that uses your computer’s idle time to search for gravitational waves from spinning neutron stars (also called pulsars) using data from the LIGO gravitational wave detector. Learn about this search at einsteinathome.org, Einstein Online and in our S3 report. Einstein@Home also searches for radio pulsars in binary systems, using data from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.”
What a great idea. I joined the program and installed their software, with the thrilling feeling that my laptop is playing even a small part in space discovery. (Shoot me into space already!)
I left my laptop to cook some dinner. When I got back, my screen saver had changed. It showed a live (?) spherical map of the universe and the area where my computer was searching along with others. Nice!
