Einstein@Home

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Einstein@Home is a volunteer distributed computing project that needs your help to find Neutron Stars via their electromagnetic and gravitational wave emission.

Why Einstein@Home?

During a lunchtime conversation in 1999, Bruce Allen and a friend were discussing an article that they read that day in The Los Angeles Times about SETI@home. The thought occurred this would be a great way to get computer cycles to tackle the data analysis problem that they had, but concluded that there would be very little public interest and the topic was dropped.

In 2004, the idea was revisited due to the upcoming event World Year of Physics 2005. The American Physical Society offered publicity and volunteers and after eventually connecting with David Anderson, who spread the excitement of BOINC, Einstein@Home was launched in February of 2005.

Goal

Einstein@Home uses the idle time of computing devices to search for weak astrophysical signals from spinning neutron stars (often called pulsars) using data from the LIGO gravitational-wave detectors, the MeerKAT radio telescope, the Fermi gamma-ray satellite, as well as archival data from the Arecibo radio telescope.

The long-term goal is to make the first direct detections of gravitational-wave emission from spinning neutron stars. Gravitational waves were predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago, and were directly seen for the first time on September 14, 2015. This observation of gravitational waves from a pair of merging black holes opens up a new window on the universe, and ushers in a new era in astronomy.

Methods

Einstein@Home searches

• Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)
• The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope
• Arecibo Radio Telescope
• MeerKAT Radio Telescope

Einstein@Home interactive screensaver showing some known pulsars and the Supernova that they came from

• impactful final statement

Project team / Sponsors

Bruce Allen. University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) Hanover, Germany.

Einstein@Home is a World Year of Physics 2005 and an International Year of Astronomy 2009 project. It is supported by the American Physical Society (APS), the US National Science Foundation (NSF), the Max Planck Society (MPG), and a number of international organizations.

See the list of contributors

Scientific discoveries

https://einsteinathome.org/science/discoveries

Scientific publications

https://boinc.berkeley.edu/pubs.php#Einstein@Home