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."

Comments

The New SETI@Home

[Shafe]

This is great to hear because it is believed that an advanced civilization would communicate not with radio waves but with gravity waves. Think about it: gravity waves fly right through anything, whereas standard EM waves are blocked by things like planets and dust clouds in space. This is why SETI@Home is a waste of time in my opinion after five years of constant computing and 3,000+ packets.

Of course, an advanced civilization using gravity waves would eventually switch over to some sort of sub-space/zero-point field communication system that could facilitate instant point-to-point communication between two points anywhere in the galaxy. Guess we'll have to wait for Subspace@Home.

Re:The New SETI@Home

[tqft]

"This is great to hear because it is believed that an advanced civilization would communicate not with radio waves but with gravity waves"

Gravity wave communication strikes me as difficult - not sure you would get the bandwidth (high frequency) without a truly monster recoil problem. And building a Gaser - while a truly phenomal feat - you would need to know where to point it.

Neutrinos might be an interesting communication solution, but you also have the problem of having to point them in the right direction.

Radio is simpler, needs lower power and even dumb earthlings have some idea on how to listen to it.

Re:The New SETI@Home

[tqft]

"Dumb earthlings" is a bit inappopriate; I'd prefer "ignorant earthlings."

You weren't at the lunch time meeting I was forced to attend - dumb and ignorant are both appropriate, and yes my "superiors" have permanently coloured my view of humanity.

"We know it's possible since it's a well known fact that hyperspace exists" - references please

"but we haven't really put much effort into cracking the science, " - I half agree here, but do you know anyone with the cash to setup a research facility for it? where do start, how do you stop filter out the cranks from research positions. While I don't think FTL travel or comms is really possible, there are some truly weird kinks in quantum theory that no-one has truly explored.

"since who on earth needs faster-than-light communication anyway." - me - give instantaeneous communication (who needs FTL comms)for 2 or 3 months and watch me rake in the big bucks (forex market - arbitaging between New York, London and Tokyo), until I get shut down or bought out. Actually give me a Naser (Neutrino Amplification Stimulated Emitted Radiation), so I can set up a comm link through the Earth rather than being routed through satellites or on cables around the Earth and I could still probably pull it off - should only need a second or two as an advantage and a fast trading program.

Re:Gravity travels instantaneously

[Shafe]

Yeah the jury is still out on the speed of gravity. I am worried that the speed of gravity is similar to that of light, or perhaps somewhat faster. But I am hoping that gravitational waves travel instantly throughout the galaxy. If so, then gravitational communication would be a highly desirable means of communicating between any two points in the galaxy.

The US Navy is right now studying using gravity waves to communicate to submarines underwater, although a URL with more information eludes me.

I am hoping someone resolves the issue of whether gravity travels at the speed of light or near it, or whether gravity travels instantly. The typical example is: if the sun disappeared right now, would Earth immediately hurl off into space, free of our orbit, or would it take 8.5 minutes for the loss of the gravitational field to be felt?

But perhaps the most interesting question of this entire thread could be: if gravity waves could be harnessed, could they be shielded too? I hope Podkletnov or Ning Li can find out! Anti-gravity here we come!

GriPhyN - Grid Physics Network

[bobhagopian]

This is one of many projects related to GriPhyN (Grid Physics Network), an organized effort by physicists to bring important data analysis tasks to the home user. Distributed data analysis for LIGO is just one of the many projects that comprise GriPhyN; others include data analysis for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and (I believe) the Large Hadron Collider, which is nearing completion at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. SETI@HOME definitely caught the eye of physicists who, until recently, had been stymied by the lack of funds for supercomputers. While Linux clusters have gone a long way in addressing their needs, they quickly realized that the really data intensive applications such as LIGO, LHC, and SDSS would require something more. I'm excited that I might finally be able to change my screensaver to something other than SETI@Home!

Commercial applications of BOINC like software

[Lifix]

With the average home computer advancing to higher levels, how long will it be until you can rent out your computer? I can imagine that it would be extreemly profitable to credit say $1.50 per hour of time running in the background of a program. Actually, paying for time is bad, paying for packets is better. Now I am not a trained professional in any way or form (I'll be a senior in HS next year) but I believe that paying people to compute should be cheaper then doing your own processing - and alot faster.

Most office computers in offices that I have been working in have relativly decent power and word processing doesn't take up much of their resources. Offices could make extra cash by running software in the backgrounds on their computers, if not during the day, then at night or after hours. Hrm, interesting possibilities :-)

LIGO Hanford!

[NoYes19]

LIGO Hanfod is a very cool facility. I got to go on a tour of it several years ago while they were in the calibration phase. At the time they were working on mapping the background vibration in the area. Trucks hitting a bump on a highway over 10 miles away left a consistent detectable spike. It was impressive the work that went into identifying every vibration they felt and then setting up monitoring and periodic average noise maps in order to help filter out the background noise to focus on the vibrations from space. LIGO is the king of siesmographs.

Its interesting that LIGO Livingston seems to be the more PR focused one. Go figure the one in a worse location for this work, but not on a nuclear site gets the PR :P, got to love America's fear of nuclear power.

If I remember right, there are 5 other international LIGOs, all collaborating on this. It's amazing the expense getting put into verifying this prediction by Einstein. It's never been clear to me why peopel care enough to go to such great lengths to verify this prediction. Anyone have insite in this? Please no philosophical boiler-plate answers...real impact-on-physics answers are what I am looking for.

Re:Many projects

[scrame]

Trying to find a cure for cancer or AIDS is something else that would attract loads of people

Fight AIDS at home is just such a project.

While I agree that there are factors that prevent this from being used by everyone constantly, large-scale projects can often have a marketing twist put on them, or offer incentives. Additionally, an especially cool geek project would certainly pull a few volunteers. The important part is getting the awareness of the project to the proper audience, as the internet expands, I cant imagine a worthy cause not being able to find volunteers.

Good book on the subject - debunks 80% of posts...

[CFD339]

The signal to noise ratio is suprisingly not bad here in /. on this so people must have some interest in it.

There's a great book called "Einstein's Unifinished Symphony" that covers all this in great detail.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/04 25 186202/qid=1089891363/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-823243 2-3201747?v=glance&s=books

The most likely thing to actually catch one is the proposed space based interferometer:

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/gr av ity_waves_000727.html