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Einstein@home finds a Pulsar

 
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bpowe
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Joined: 17 May 2002
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 17, 2010 8:17 pm    Post subject: Einstein@home finds a Pulsar Reply with quote

From the Sky "& Telescope news blog:

Home Computers Dredge Up Weird Pulsar
First came SETI@home, which enabled millions of people to sign up their
computers to sift through radio-telescope data for alien transmissions
from the stars. Now 11 years old and running stronger than ever,
SETI@home has opened the way for about 50 similar distributed-computing
projects — in molecular biology, climate modeling, quantum chemistry,
chess problems, and other number-crunching endeavors. Most of these run
through BOINC, the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing,
where you can choose your projects to join.

Several of these involve astronomy. One called Einstein@Home started by
examining data from the LIGO gravitational-wave observatory, looking for
certain subtle signatures of spacetime ripples that might have escaped
initial notice. Last year Einstein@Home expanded to took through radio
data from an ongoing pulsar hunt at the Arecibo dish in Puerto Rico,
using an algorithm that's especially sensitive to pulsars circling in
very fast orbits around other objects. A quarter million people have
installed Einstein@Home on their computers.

On June 11th Einstein@home made its first discovery: a pulsar drifting
through space all by itself about 17,000 light-years away in Vulpecula.
Designated PSR J2007+2722, it’s a previously unknown neutron star
spinning 40.8 times per second. It seems to be a rare case of an old
pulsar that was spun up by gaining mass from a companion that either blew
up long ago or was eaten completely. It's the fastest such spinner on
record.

The discovery took place on a computer running in the basement of Chris
and Helen Colvin of Ames, Iowa. Three days later it was confirmed on a
computer owned by Daniel Gebhardt in Mainz, Germany. It then brought
itself to human attention.

About 2,000 pulsars are currently known. The project’s “holy grail,” says
Cornell radio astronomer Jim Cordes, would be a pulsar orbiting something
with a period of less than an hour. That would allow new tests of
Einstein’s general relativity, the project's longterm goal.
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