Important news on BRP7 and FGRPB1 work on E@H

Dear crunchers at Einstein@Home

We have some important news to share with you which potentially call for some action on your part.
If you have configured some or all of your hosts to EXCLUSIVELY run the FGRP1BG search (not to be confused with the FGRP5 search), please read the following very carefully to avoid an unwanted interruption in your crunching activity!
 
Because of an evolution of our scientific priorities, the following changes will happen on E@H:

1) The FGRP1BG (G for GPU) search will wind down (for now, see below) and will run out of new work in approximately 2 to 3 weeks from now.

2) The FGRP1BG search might be restarted later, but even then it will likely be on-and-off depending on the availability of interesting pulsar candidate data to feed to E@H. So beginning 2 weeks from now, you should no longer rely on a steady stream of work for FGRP1BG!    

3) The BRP7 search will move up in our scientific priority as far as electromagnetic astronomy is concerned

4) Of course, the Gravitational Wave search (currently O3 All Sky search) will continue and is not affected by the change. Please continue support for this search!!

We are fully aware that the FGRP1BG search is very popular with many volunteers, including many of our most productive crunchers. We are extremely grateful for your continued support over the years and your considerable investment in this search. Your massive contributions in computing power have helped us process a vast amount of data for the most promising gamma-ray pulsar candidates, and with your help we have now reached the point where candidates from other searches like BRP7 have become more scientifically promising and urgent.

Is there any action volunteers have to take now?

Only volunteers who have opted out of all other searches except FGRP1BG need to take action to make sure they will still receive work from E@H in the future. In this case, you should use the projects web-configuration to allow other work, especially BRP7, for your hosts. There is no need to deactivate FGRP1BG since it might resume later. If you need help with the configuration process, please feel free to ask us for help here.

Note: If you have installed an app_info.xml file (BOINC "anonymous platform" feature) this will limit the host in question to work for applications defined in that file only! In that case you might want to consider deleting the app_info.xml file altogether and go back to "stock" E@H appications or include apps for other E@H searches (e.g. BRP7) in your app_info.xml file.

So, what is BRP7 all about?

BRP7 is an exciting search for binary radio pulsars in the data collected by the TRAPUM collaboration, using a very powerful network of radio telescopes, MeerKAT.

Einstein@Home is searching for pulsars in MeerKAT observations of globular clusters - dense groups of old stars that often contain large numbers of pulsars, and particularly exotic binary systems. One target for BRP7 is the Terzan 5 cluster, which contains 49 known pulsars, more than any other globular cluster, including the fastest known pulsar spinning 716 times per second! The TRAPUM project has already discovered 79 new globular cluster pulsars, and with BRP7 we hope to expand this number with searches sensitive to very short period binary pulsars. These pulsars may provide the most sensitive tests of Einstein's theory of General Relativity, but they cannot be found without sensitive observations and enormous computational resources.
 
The BRP7 app is also highly optimized and makes very efficient use of your GPUs. If you had planned to keep your home warm in winter with E@H, the BRP7 app won't let you down :-) !
 
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have questions or concerns regarding the changes outlined above.

Happy crunching
The E@H team