nibot ([personal profile] nibot) wrote2005-08-14 04:53 pm
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help with LIGO

If you would like to help with the LIGO project, you can run the "Einstein@home" project, which will put your personal computer to work processing data from LIGO. It's like Seti@home except it looks for gravitational waves from pulsars—and the data processing from this distributed processing really is valuable. To get started, download BOINC (a generic distributed-computing platform), and then sign up for Einstein@home.

[identity profile] util.livejournal.com 2005-08-15 12:57 am (UTC)(link)
Will I get a Nobel if my computer finds some waves?

[identity profile] nibot.livejournal.com 2005-08-15 01:37 am (UTC)(link)
That was the subject of about an hour of discussion today.

Well, not that specifically, but the idea of a cash prizes came up. Everyone laughed it off. The poor guy was trying to get approval to show real-time results from einstein@home (i.e. candidate signal detections), but the collaboration generally requires collaboration approval before any scientific results are published... any so they aren't too thrilled with this (completely reasonable, in my opinion) plan.