Einstein@home

PROJECT

Url:http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/
Start date: 2005/02/19
End date: Still open
Infrastructure: BOINC

TEAM

Official team page:
Leader:

PROJECT DEFINITION

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Subject

Natural sciences > Gravitational Physics (physics)

Description

Einstein@Home is a World Year of Physics 2005 and an International Year of Astronomy 2009 project supported by the American Physical Society (APS) and by a number of international organizations. Einstein@Home uses volounteers computer's idle time to perform physical calculations.

Purpose.

Search for evidence from LIGO detectors of continuous gravitational wave sources from rapidly spinning non-axisymmetric neutron stars, and radio telescope data searching for radio pulsars.

Research question.

"Einstein suggested that we live in a universe full of gravitational waves. He proposed that exploding stars, colliding black holes and other violent events create waves that alter space and time. We have not detected these waves yet because it requires tools sensitive enough to measure very small effects. It’s like trying to detect a change in the distance from the earth to the sun equal to the width of an atom." (Einstein@Home All Sky Search link) According to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, a pulsar that is not perfectly round acts as a gravitational-wave generator, stirring up ripples in the fabric of space-time.

ABOUT PARTICIPANT TASKS

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Grey typology	Participation typology	Contribution type:
Computing: YES Thinking: NO Sensing: NO Gaming: NO	Crowdsourcing ☐ Distributed intelligence ☑ Participatory science ☐ Extreme citizen science ☐ Science outreach ☐	Data collection ☐ Data analysis ☐ Data interpretation ☐--------
Gaming
Genre:	Gaming elements:
Interface
Data type to manipulate: none - N/A	interface enjoyment: not cool/attractive Interface usability:	Member profiles::N/A Member profile elements: photo

ABOUT GUIDANCE AND FEEDBACK

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Guidance	Feedback on
Tutorial and documentation: SOMEWHAT Training sequence: SOMEWHAT Peer to peer guidance: SOMEWHAT	individual performance: Somewhat collective performance: YES research progress: YES

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COMMUNITY

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Tools	News & Events
Communication: website, forum Social Network: Twitter, Facebook, other	Main news site: http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/forum_index.php Frequency of project news updates: N/A Type of events: MeetUps, other Frequency of events :
Community description
Community size (volounteers based): 335 000 Role: Interaction form: Has official community manager(s): maybe Has team work N/A

Other information about community: Forum : Very active, some threads with over 20,000 views and 700 posts Social software site : Fairly active

Volunteers are driven by the fantastic results that their research creates, to date 24 pulsars have been found.

The creation of teams that volunteers can join really creates a sense of community and ethic of group work. Volunteers meet up in teams and collect credit in team (great motivator).
Community led additions:

OTHER PROJECT INFORMATION

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Yes

Yes Gravitational Physics Natural sciences physics Search for evidence from LIGO detectors of continuous gravitational wave sources from rapidly spinning non-axisymmetric neutron stars, and radio telescope data searching for radio pulsars. "Einstein suggested that we live in a universe full of gravitational waves. He proposed that exploding stars, [[Has research question::colliding black holes and other violent events create waves that alter space and time. We have not detected these waves yet because it requires tools sensitive enough to measure very small effects. It’s like trying to detect a change in the distance from the earth to the sun equal to the width of an atom." (Einstein@Home All Sky Search link) According to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity]], a pulsar that is not perfectly round acts as a gravitational-wave generator, stirring up ripples in the fabric of space-time.

Einstein@home

distributed intelligence none - N/A, other: Thinking: no Computing: yes Sensing: no Gaming: no

not cool/attractive

N/A N/A N/A N/A yes yes

N/A photo maybe website, forum Twitter, Facebook, other MeetUps, other

http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/forum index.php 335 000 N/A Forum : Very active, some threads with over 20,000 views and 700 posts Social software site : Fairly active

Volunteers are driven by the fantastic results that their research creates, to date 24 pulsars have been found.

The creation of teams that volunteers can join really creates a sense of community and ethic of group work. Volunteers meet up in teams and collect credit in team (great motivator).

N/A

BIBLIOGRAPHY

"Einstein@Home All Sky Search". American Physical Society (2006)

http://web.archive.org/web/20060504233801/http://www.einsteinathome.org/about/allsky.html

Archived from the original on 2006-05-04