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posted by chromas on Monday April 15 2019, @11:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the RTX-On dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

DIY gravitational waves with 'BlackHoles@Home'

West Virginia University assistant professor Zachariah Etienne is leading what will soon become a global volunteer computing effort. The public will be invited to lend their own computers to help the scientific community unlock the secrets contained in gravitational waves observed when black holes smash together.

[...] "As our gravitational wave detectors become more sensitive, we're going to need to greatly expand our efforts to understand all of the information encoded in gravitational waves from colliding binary black holes," Etienne said. "We are turning to the general public to help with these efforts, which involve generating unprecedented numbers of self-consistent simulations of these extremely energetic collisions.

[...] "Each desktop computer will be able to perform a single simulation of colliding black holes," said Etienne. By seeking public involvement through use of vast numbers of personal desktop computers, Etienne and others hope to dramatically increase the throughput of the theoretical gravitational wave predictions needed to extract information from observations of the collisions.

[...] Etienne and his team are building a website with downloadable software based on the same Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, or BOINC, system used for the SETI@Home project and other scientific applications. The free middleware system is designed to help harness the processing power of thousands of personal computers across the globe. The West Virginia team has named their project BlackHoles@Home and expects to have it up and running later this year.

They have already established a website where the public can begin learning more about the effort: https://math.wvu.edu/~zetienne/SENR/.


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @04:11PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @04:11PM (#829902)

    If I understand this summary, this @Home project is to simulate black hole collisions while the Einstein@Home project is to analyze LIGO data?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @11:23PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @11:23PM (#830161)

    What if they just pipe the BlackHole@Home simulation data into the Einstein@Home project? When your science is basically able to be spoofed by simulated data, we really need third party sources rather than government funded outfits with military ties and "Yay-Gov!" propaganda objectives...

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday April 16 2019, @06:30AM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Tuesday April 16 2019, @06:30AM (#830307) Journal

      What if they just pipe the BlackHole@Home simulation data into the Einstein@Home project?

      It would be a great way to test whether the Einstein@Home code works correctly.

      When your science is basically able to be spoofed by simulated data, we really need third party sources rather than government funded outfits with military ties and "Yay-Gov!" propaganda objectives...

      Oh sorry, you were going for a conspiracy theory. You know what? By claiming a conspiracy behind everything you are harming the credibility of all those who point out real conspiracies.

      Well, maybe you're part of a big conspiracy aiming at damaging the credibility of conspiracy theories? :-)

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.