Einstein@Home has become one of the world’s most popular volunteer computing projects.
What makes it even more impressive is this week’s report of an unusual pulsar discovered through the network computing effort.
Einstein@home, launched in 2005, was one of the first computer-sourcing projects using donated time from home and office computers – some 500,000 in all of 250,000 volunteers from 192 countries.
The payoff is proof that volunteer computing can produce really good science. The lucky discoverers of a novel pulsar were Chris and Helen Colvin of Ames, Iowa, and Daniel Gebhardt of Universität Mainz in Musikinformatik, Germany.
The new pulsar — called PSR J2007+2722 — is a neutron star that rotates 41 times per second. It is located in the Milky Way Galaxy approximately 17,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Vulpecula.
Einstein@Home is based at the Center for Gravitation and Cosmology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, Germany.
“This is a thrilling moment for Einstein@Home and our volunteers. It proves that public participation can discover new things in our universe. I hope it inspires more people to join us to help find other secrets hidden in the data,” said Bruce Allen, leader of the Einstein@Home project, director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute), and adjunct professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
For more information, go to Einstein@Home at:
http://www.einsteinathome.org/
By LD/CSE