EINSTEIN@HOME - Team FreeBSD

A team dedicated to the users of FreeBSD running BOINC under linux compatibility mode, or a native FreeBSD BOINC build. Team FreeBSD is dedicated to users of FreeBSD, but not limited to JUST the users. Anyone with the interest in developing a community of people interested in technology, open standards, NIX or BSD based operating systems are welcome and encouraged to earn credits and share ideas and conversation.

« | »   Return to FreeBSD HOME

EINSTEIN@HOME Crunches on the Fermi Paradox

Announcement

We are launching a new Einstein@Home application, which searches data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope (Fermi-LAT) for millisecond (or slower) gamma-ray pulsars. The Fermi Satellite was launched in mid-2008 and has already discovered a number of new gamma-ray pulsars. Questions, comments and problem reports about the new search and application should be placed onto this message board thread. Bruce Allen Director, Einstein@Home - [source]

Fermi Large Area Telescope

The Large Area Telescope (LAT) is the principal scientific instrument on the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope spacecraft. Originally called the Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), the mission was renamed for the physicist Enrico Fermi. The Fermi spacecraft was launched into a near-earth orbit on 11 June 2008. The design life of the mission is 5 years and the goal for mission operations is 10 years. The Fermi LAT instrument collaboration is an international effort, funded by agencies in several countries[*].

The LAT is an imaging high-energy gamma-ray telescope covering the energy range from about 20 MeV to more than 300 GeV. Such gamma rays are emitted only in the most extreme conditions, by particles moving very nearly at the speed of light. The LAT's field of view covers about 20% of the sky at any time, and it scans continuously, covering the whole sky every three hours. - [source]

Fermi's paradox

The Fermi paradox (Fermi's paradox or Fermi-paradox) is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations.

The age of the universe and its vast number of stars suggest that if the Earth is typical, extraterrestrial life should be common.^[1] In an informal discussion in 1950, the physicist Enrico Fermi questioned why, if a multitude of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations exists in the Milky Way galaxy, evidence such asspacecraft or probes is not seen. A more detailed examination of the implications of the topic began with a paper by Michael H. Hart in 1975, and it is sometimes referred to as the Fermi–Hart paradox.^[2] Other common names for the same phenomenon are Fermi's question ("Where are they?"), the Fermi Problem, the Great Silence,^{[3][4][5][6][7]} and silentium universi^[7][8] (Latin for "the silence of the universe"; the misspelling silencium universi is also common).

There have been attempts to resolve the Fermi paradox by locating evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations, along with proposals that such life could exist without human knowledge. Counterarguments suggest that intelligent extraterrestrial life does not exist or occurs so rarely or briefly that humans will never make contact with it.

- [source]

Add Comment
Topic
Comment text (Required)
Your name (Required)
E-Mail address (Required)
Have a web page?
Verification (Required)

Your comment will appear once approved by the post author.

Your e-mail address will NOT be shared.

For those of you wondering what the EINSTEIN@HOME Project is:

My name is Andy Wright - the founder, but really the creator of Team FreeBSD. If you want me to add any links, or have any questions or inclinations for such things related to our group (or to just say hi) - send me an e-mail: einstein@extracted.org or Skype name: extracted

''It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure'' -- Albert Einstein

Total Credit, Last 60 days (based on the daily update numbers)

Total Credit, last months

Credit per day, Last 60 days (based on the daily update numbers)

World Position History, lower is better, Last 60 days (based on the daily update numbers)

World Position History, lower is better, last months

EINSTEIN@HOME RSS Feed

05/15/2012 07:21 AM
Einstein@Home GPU Application for ATI/AMD Graphics Cards
After more than a year of work by Oliver Bock, Bernd Machenschalk, Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein and other developers, we are pleased to announce the release of the first Einstein@Home application for ATI/AMD Graphics Cards. This OpenCL application, which searches Arecibo data for new radio pulsars, is about a factor of ten faster than the same search running on a typical CPU. The application is currently available for Windows and Linux computers with Radeon HD 5000 or better graphics cards. We hope to have a version for Macintosh (Apple OS X 10.8, Mountain Lion) sometime this summer, but there are still some problems that need to be fixed or worked around. Volunteers who wish to run this application will need to install version 7.0.27 or later of the BOINC client. Please see this thread for more information, or if you want to ask questions. Many thanks to the AMD/ATI team for their support in the OpenCL software development effort. Bruce Allen Director, Einstein@Home

05/15/2012 03:36 AM
Einstein@Home volunteers discover three new radio pulsars in Arecibo data
Einstein@Home volunteers have discovered three new radio pulsars (J1901+0510, J1858+0319, and J1857+0259) in Arecibo PALFA data! Congratulations to:

• John A. Lorimer Jr. (USA)
• Ugur Munir Kir, Guzel Sanatlar Saatchi & Saatchi (Turkey)
• Philipp Kählitz (Germany)
• Termit (Russia)
• Philemon1752 (Switzerland)
• edgen (Russia)

Further details about these and our other newly-discovered pulsars can be found on this web page, and will be published in due course. Bruce Allen Director, Einstein@Home