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New Distributed Project Seeks Gravity Waves
fenimor writes "Much like the popular SETI@Home distributed computing project that searches radio telescope data for signs of extraterrestrial life, the new Einstein@Home will search for gravitational waves in data collected by U.S. and European gravitational wave detectors. Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916, but only now has technology reached the point that scientists hope to detect them directly."
Not to push this down, but isn't Folding@Home a little more important for humanity overall?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html
And, yes, go ahead and mark me Troll
http://www.busyweather.com/
Why are so many people participating in seti@home when both the goal and the expected result are kind of weak? It seems that an ideologic goal seems to attractive power of an ideologic goal is higher than the repelling power of a low chance of success. I would rate this as a goal irrelevant to most people and an undefined chance of success, so why join? In my opinion, biology projects with protein folding to find cancer/AIDS cures seem to have the best chance of success/utility product.
Actually, the angular resolution is worse than that. The antenna pattern of the LIGO and VIRGO projects is close to 90 degrees of sky. However, work is under way at Caltech to use multiple detectors (like LIGO Hanford and Livingston) in a fashion similar to how radio astronomy uses multiple dishes to form a more sensitive, finer resolution antenna (this is based on interferometery).
The stochastic gravity wave background, which is a prediction of inflation, is predicted to be at power levels which are currently below the noise level of the detectors. Advanced LIGO and LISA may have noise levels low enough to verify or disprove this prediction.
-Leo
You also have to keep in mind that for something about which we know so little, learning more about it will probably lead to applications we haven't even thought of yet. When X-rays were discovered, do you think Roentgen immediately thought of using it for detecting weapons in bags or measuring atomic spacing in crystal latices? Probably not. It could very well be useless, but I expect we will find something useful to do with them if and when we detect them (assuming they exist).
There's a lot of moderators out there that don't understand just what a Troll is. They think that if they don't agree with somebody's opinions, that makes the poster a Troll, no matter how polite and well-reasoned teh post is. Either that, or they think it's a good way to punish somebody they don't like. All I know is, at least half the Troll mods I get to meta-mod are unfair, and that's how I mark them.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
No thanks. I don't donate to people who claim to own data.
They also make no mention of license terms or client source availability.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
this einstein-project is IMHO a little bit more worth to support than SETI, but those cancer-project is the one everybody should support (sorry, got no url right now)
I have been doing seti for nearly since it started, currently standing at 99.339% in overall rankings.
I do this mainly because my sci-fi reading goes all the way back to E.E. (Doc) Smith, which some of you might consider as the McGuffies Readers of the day and which is circa 60+ years back up the log now. One always hopes that his machine might be the one to raise its hand and holler, Hey Teach, I hear something.
But realisticly, after 5+ years, and the results of nearly 6 million people, coupled with the limited sky view of Aricebo, does tend to tell you after a while that the chances are someplace between point double ought zip and absolutely nothing. The data, I think, has been analysed several times by now, with no really outstanding candidate signals haveing been detected. Going over that same limited band of the sky, at the same limited band of frequencies, is beginning to grow old.
This gravity wave project is intrigueing, but I don't seem to be able to dl the BOINC client, mime type error I think at the BOINC site.
As far as the parent posters suggestion that we should be working on the cancer project, sorry but I'm enough of an open source advocate that my cycles will not be used for such a project wherein the output data is owned by some commercial entity, who if they get lucky will profit immensely from any discoveries so made. Likewise for the folding@home project. If the results are not to be public knowledge, able to benefit all manner of life, then screw 'em just like they'll screw me at the prescription counter for the product that may result.
There is, I would hope, a new way of doing such research that will meet these ideas, doing it openly, with the results being unencumbered by patents, and the products so developed then sold on the open market (but regulated by the FDA of course) by the time honored tradition of he who can do it the best, or cheapest, being the marketplace winner, with open competition between the makers for our dollars. The FDA's job then is like the agriculture dept folks, to make sure the process is being done by the proper methods, that being by way of testing the efficiency, and safety of the product at doing what it is being sold for.
But to bring that about, you are all I trust, aware that we will have to declare a Bill Shakespear day as an annual holiday.
The chances of that actually happening are also somewhere between point double ought zip and nothing in our present society.
Then, and only then, would I personally be interested in doing what amounts to free data processing for a commercially profitable entity.
Now, if they want to buy my cpu time at a rate that helps me pay the energy bill to run these machines, and a piece of the action (no RIAA bookkeeping to be allowed here folks, its a piece of the gross sales only, the internal expenses for that Lamborgini and the sexytary who wants a quarter of a mill just to have your baby are yours to control) then I might consider learning a different tune.
But I sure wouldn't sleep any better.
Now, if they would fix the mime type on the linux binary of BOINC, I'd dl it and take a look.
Cheers, Gene