“I’m thrilled with the response we've gotten in such a short time,” says Einstein@Home principal investigator Bruce Allen of the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. “The growing number of participants increases the computing power available to us, and improves our odds of finding something. Were we to find a signal in this way, it would be an exceptional moment for both theoretical and experimental physics. It would also be the first such scientific breakthrough that was enabled by public distributed computing.”
By searching data being collected by U.S. and joint British/German gravitational wave detectors, Einstein@Home allows anyone from elementary school children to the most advanced astrophysicists to participate in the quest for gravitational waves. These waves are subtle ripples in space and time predicted by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. The software necessary to join in the search can be downloaded and run by anyone with Internet access.
Einstein@Home searches the vast amounts of data collected by the US Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (LIGO) and the British/German GEO-600 gravitational wave observatory for waves coming compact objects such as quark stars and neutron stars.
The LIGO and GEO-600 detectors collect enormous amounts of data that even the latest supercomputers arent big enough to analyze. So Einstein@Home was created to enlist the aid of thousands of people who donate computational time on their home computers to analyze small portions of the data. The creators of the program from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, the Albert Einstein Institute in Germany, and the LIGO Laboratory hope to involve hundreds of thousands of people in the search, much like the SETI@Home search for extraterrestrial signals has done.
Einstein@Home is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac operating systems. The program provides a screensaver that shows the celestial sphere with the major constellations outlined. A moving marker on the screensaver indicates the portion of sky that your computer is searching.
Einstein@Home is a flagship program of the World Year of Physics 2005, a celebration of Einstein’s “miraculous year” of discoveries in 1905.
Additional information:
Einstein@Home web page: http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/
World Year of Physics web page: http://www.physics2005.org/
About the World Year of Physics:
The World Year of Physics is an international celebration of physics, timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's "miraculous year." In 1905, Einstein revolutionized much of science with three groundbreaking advances: he proved of the existence of the atoms and molecules, he validated the emerging field of quantum mechanics, and he developed the theory of special relativity - which led to the most famous equation ever written, E=mc^2.
The United Nations has officially declared 2005 the International Year of Physics, and more than thirty nations are participating in the year-long celebrations with public lectures, museum exhibits, and educational projects.