August 14, 2010 by Andy Russell
Three forward-thinking ‘citizen scientists’ have set their home computers to work to search the skies, resulting in the discovery of an astronomical object in the sky. The discovery, termed a ‘disrupted binary pulsar’, is created when a star of a significant size collapses.
Chris and Helen Colvin, IT professionals from America, and Daniel Gebhardt, a systems analyst from Germany, discovered the object. They were participating in the Eisntein@Home project, which requests that volunteers use their computers at times when they would normally be idle, to search through reams of scientific data.
Einstein@Home is a project based upon the concept of distributed computing, which processes data on PCs based in people’s homes. Around five hundred thousand computers all over the globe are being engaged to analyse data. To participate in the experiment, users download a screensaver which illustrates an area of sky which is processed by the computers.
The astronomical object, which has been designated ‘PSR J2007+2722;, is a neutron star formed through supernovae, or stellar explosions. It rotates at a rate of 41 times a second, and has a low magnetic field.
A professor of Cornell University has stated that the object has come free from a companion star, which must have exploded. “We think there should be more of these disrupted binary pulsars, but there haven’t been that many found. No matter what else we find out about it, this pulsar is bound to be extremely interesting for understanding the basic physics of neutron stars and how they form. The discovery has demonstrated the power of such distributed computing networks to collect and sort through vast amounts of data,” the spokesperson commented.
The Einstein@Home project was set up originally to locate ripples in space-time. This find was made when computers were set to search data collected by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, US. Approximately a third of the project’s capacity is spent on searching Arecibo data.
Related posts:
