Cloud of volunteer computers discovers 24 pulsars
August 30, 2013
The E&T Magazine. Author: Edd Gent.
The combined computing power of 200,000 private PCs has helped discover 24 new pulsars in archival data. The Einstein@Home project connects the PCs of volunteers from around the world to a create a network with the power of a supercomputer, which scientists from the Max Planck Institutes for Gravitational Physics and for Radio Astronomy in Germany used to analyse archival radio telescope data on the Milky Way.
Using new search methods, the network discovered 24 new pulsars – dense neutron stars that rapidly rotate and emit a beam of radio waves along their magnetic field axis similar to the spotlight of a lighthouse, which can be observed if it points towards…
The new discoveries, some of which are very rare forms of pulsars, can be used as testbeds for Einstein’s general theory of relativity and could help to complete our picture of the pulsar population. “We could only conduct our search thanks to the enormous computing power provided by the Einstein@Home volunteers,” said Benjamin Knispel, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute/AEI), and lead author of a study now published in The Astrophysical Journal…
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