Slashdot Mirror
BOINC Project to Search for Gravitational Waves
Buzz Skyline writes "Einstein@Home is a new, BOINC-based distributed computing project that will analyze data from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (LIGO). The goal is to perform a whole-sky, gravitational wave survey of pulsars. Beta-test versions of the Einstein@Home screen saver should be available by the end of the summer, and final release is planned for early 2005."
So far, this would seem to be the 3rd BOINC project after Seti@Home and Predictor@Home.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Yes and that's what BOINC is, a generic framework for these types of tasks.
SETI@Home on BOINC
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
I work in physics research at the moment and when I first discovered distributed computing years ago I thought that eventually pretty much all research would end up using it. However, the problem with the seti@home model is that in order to get your user base you have to be doing a project that is 'cool' enough to get the attention of the public. 'We are looking for ET' is something that everyone understands and many people are interested in the possibility of alien life so you can get a large user base. Plus, it helps that the screen saver is perty! Trying to find a cure for cancer or AIDS is something else that would attract loads of people (in fact I remember taking part in such a DC project a couple of years back - dont know if its still going). However some projects would find it more difficult to attract the public. For example I am involved in modelling things called 'photonic crystals'. Now these things are very cool in my opinion but they take a bit of explaining to a non-physicist. In my experience - after I get started explaining them to any non-geek their eyes glaze over and they just dont care. Now I may be just rubbish at explaining stuff but I suspect (or is that hope??) that if you can't sum up your project as simply as 'The search for ET', 'Cure for Cancer' or 'Win 100,000 by finding a HUGE prime number' then getting computer power out of the public will be almost impossible. But then thats what the grid is for I guess.
One of my colleagues likes to tease our students by referring to this volunteer grid stuff as "H-bomb@home". "Sure, your SW says it's doing gravity-wave calculations. I claim that USDoD is using it to do H-bomb (or bioweapon, or whatever) design simulations for free on your computer. Go ahead, prove me wrong."
IMHO it's an interesting point.
"Score 0 Redundant" ?????
Am I the only one here that finds this attempt at humor actually rather interesting. Given that my pocket calculator probably has more power than the computer system on the Apolo lander (please no debates on whether or not it happened) I can see this comment making a lot of sense for the future of high-powered computing.
Karma? Hey I just call it as I see it.
Millions of people run SETI@home every day, despite the power cost. I currently run three computers, two of which reboot once a week, and a laptop which I reboot once a night. I run seti on all of them and only turn it off when I need the best system performance for benchmarks or games. If there was an option for me to configure my software, so that I made a profit off seti, it would do nothing pay out. In order to target new consumers/users, the payout would have to be significant to bring in users and cover costs, but low enough not to bankrupt companies. I believe that this is all feasible and will be happening in the near future.
In nature, there are neither rewards or punishments, there are only consequences.
Ummm it just came out of Beta like two weeks ago... Either you were working with a very early version of the Boinc code, or else you haven't spent a whole lot of time on it... Yes, there is still definitely a lot of work to be done on Boinc, both client and server side. But before giving everyone a blanket recommendation to avoid using something, you should at least waited until the first public release version before doing stability tests...
In a bit of my research into gravity in general, the discovery and eventual understanding of gravity (waves or whatever they are) would me the most momentous discovery of science in the last 500 years. The eventual ability to alter and manipulate this natural force could mean a lot to science and everyday life. Some suggest that gravity, unlike light, is INSTANTANEOUS. Meaning that its effect is not time measurable, its force propagates throughout the universe everywhere instantaneously. Imagine the possibilites for communications, travel etc... is this proved to be true...
The US Navy actual does a lot of research of gravity waves, however they are referring to a slightly different definition or nature. Instead they are looking at periodic influences of tides and other aspects of gravity. For example, examining the effects of "gravity waves" on the atmosphere. It also doesn't help that a component of surface waves on the ocean are also called "gravity waves" since these are waves that are working against gravity. A google search shows the stuff does show up in a lot of Navy research documents, and would probably be pretty confusing if it doesn't give enough information to hint it is not the same gravity waves talked about here.
There has been a few popular discussions of gravity wave (in the normal sense) communication, including a short blurb in several magazines that I recently remember referring to a paper about converting electromagnetic waves to gravity waves. I'm skeptical of what is proposed, but it doesn't take too much equipment to test, so I wouldn't be surprised if other people were testing it. Although there is no explicit mentioning of the Navy in any of that I remember.