Einstein@Home: Search for Gravitational Waves

Einstein@Home was announced on February 19 at the annual meeting of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.

The web site description of the software reads: "Einstein@home is a
program that uses your computer's idle time to search for spinning
neutron stars (also called pulsars) using data from the LIGO and GEO
gravitational wave detectors. Einstein@home is a World Year of Physics
2005 project supported by the American Physical Society (APS) and by a
number of international organizations."

Available for Linux, Mac, and Windows at
http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/.

A description of the Einstein@Home screensaver may be found at
http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/starsphere.php and a screen capture of
the screen saver may be seen at
http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/images/Starsphere_1024x768.jpg.

Happy hunting!

Davoud

Davoud wrote:

Einstein@Home was announced on February 19 at the annual meeting of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.

The web site description of the software reads: "Einstein@home is a
program that uses your computer's idle time to search for spinning
neutron stars (also called pulsars) using data from the LIGO and GEO
gravitational wave detectors. Einstein@home is a World Year of Physics
2005 project supported by the American Physical Society (APS) and by a
number of international organizations."

Available for Linux, Mac, and Windows at
http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/.

A description of the Einstein@Home screensaver may be found at
http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/starsphere.php and a screen capture of
the screen saver may be seen at
http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/images/Starsphere_1024x768.jpg.

Happy hunting!

Davoud
I have a great deal of concern about BOINC. How do you really know what kind
of data you are processing with it? I just dont trust it. I've crunched
over 31,000 WU's with regular old seti@home and with that i know what I'm
crunching, but with BOINC i dont think you can be sure. It seems an ideal
way to pass off some computer work for a big pharmacological company for
free, and I'm not interested in putting more money in their pockets to
create drugs they are going to charge extreme prices for anyway.
Only the paranoid survive,
Eric

Eric wrote:

Davoud wrote:



Einstein@Home was announced on February 19 at the annual meeting of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.

The web site description of the software reads: "Einstein@home is a
program that uses your computer's idle time to search for spinning
neutron stars (also called pulsars) using data from the LIGO and GEO
gravitational wave detectors. Einstein@home is a World Year of Physics
2005 project supported by the American Physical Society (APS) and by a
number of international organizations."

Available for Linux, Mac, and Windows at
http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/.

A description of the Einstein@Home screensaver may be found at
http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/starsphere.php and a screen capture of
the screen saver may be seen at
http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/images/Starsphere_1024x768.jpg.

Happy hunting!

Davoud


Eric,

I have a great deal of concern about BOINC. How do you really know what kind
of data you are processing with it? I just dont trust it. I've crunched
over 31,000 WU's with regular old seti@home and with that i know what I'm

Just last weekend I reached 1000 WU's (I only started in May/2004) and
switched over to BOINC the day before yesterday .... to summarize, lots
of problems with the latter and it is disappointing. Although I can
download and process work units, I cannot upload the results?!

crunching, but with BOINC i dont think you can be sure. It seems an ideal
way to pass off some computer work for a big pharmacological company for
free, and I'm not interested in putting more money in their pockets to
create drugs they are going to charge extreme prices for anyway.

Yeah, but how do you know if the classic S@H units were also not
"contaminated" with something else and references to RA and Dec were
there as a smoke screen and nothing else?

I have also wondered how easy it would be to push through other data as
SETI work units etc so as to help with some other project behind the scenes.

Only the paranoid survive,

Clear skies!

Anthony.

Eric

Davoud wrote:
Einstein@Home was announced on February 19 at the annual meeting of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.

The web site description of the software reads: "Einstein@home is a
program that uses your computer's idle time to search for spinning
neutron stars (also called pulsars) using data from the LIGO and GEO
gravitational wave detectors. Einstein@home is a World Year of Physics
2005 project supported by the American Physical Society (APS) and by a
number of international organizations."

Available for Linux, Mac, and Windows at
http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/.

A description of the Einstein@Home screensaver may be found at
http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/starsphere.php and a screen capture of
the screen saver may be seen at
http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/images/Starsphere_1024x768.jpg.

Happy hunting!

Davoud

Just in time as setiathome have be down for most of the last 48 hours!

Davoud wrote:
Einstein@Home was announced on February 19 at the annual meeting of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.
...Available for Linux, Mac, and Windows at http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/...

Eric replied:
I have a great deal of concern about BOINC. How do you really know what kind
of data you are processing with it? I just dont trust it. I've crunched
over 31,000 WU's with regular old seti@home and with that i know what I'm
crunching, but with BOINC i dont think you can be sure. It seems an ideal
way to pass off some computer work for a big pharmacological company for
free, and I'm not interested in putting more money in their pockets to
create drugs they are going to charge extreme prices for anyway.

*****

I'm unfamiliar with the inner workings of BOINC. Are you concerned
about a big pharmaceutical hacking the software, or do you think that
the integrity of the LIGO and/or GEO teams is questionable -- or both?

Only the paranoid survive,

And I heard someplace that the meek would inherit the Earth!

Davoud

Anthony Ayiomamitis wrote:
I have also wondered how easy it would be to push through other data as
SETI work units etc so as to help with some other project behind the scenes.

I suspect it would be very easy to get most people to do it. Typically,
we as users rely on the vigilance of a few select wizards who hack the
data format to figure out what's really in there and what's happening to
it. I don't know if SETI@home is a big enough blip on the radar screen
to attract that sort of attention.

Even if it were, however, if the puppetmasters were willing to put up
with a certain level of inefficiency, another project could make use of
entirely legitimate astronomical computations with dummy data inserted.

It wouldn't be the feds, though. I would guess that they have access to
more computing resources than what SETI@home can lay its hands on.

Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.txt

"Eric" wrote:

I have a great deal of concern about BOINC. How do you really know
what kind of data you are processing with it? I just dont trust it. I've
crunched over 31,000 WU's with regular old seti@home and with that
i know what I'm crunching, but with BOINC i dont think you can be sure.

On the contrary, BOINC is much more trustworthy than the old SETI@home
system, which had a proprietary code base. BOINC is all open source, so
if you have the ability (or know someone who does) you can examine the
program source code yourself to see what it is doing.