New Zooniverse project “Pulsar Seekers”

Dear Einstein@Home volunteers,

we've just launched a new Zooniverse project called "Pulsar Seekers" to help classify radio pulsar candidates. Please, use your eyes and your intellect to help us to find new pulsars:

https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/rsengar/pulsar-seekers.

Since 2009, Einstein@Home volunteers have donated computing time to analyse data from the Arecibo telescope’s PALFA pulsar survey. Our science team has sifted through the results, and identified a large number of promising pulsar candidates.

The number of candidates is too big for one person inspect the resulting diagnostic plots, but thousands of volunteers working together can do it quickly. On Zooniverse you'll find a simple tutorial, which teaches you how to tell real pulsars from noise.

If you would like to join the collective effort and help discover new pulsars, please join the “Pulsar Seekers” Zooniverse project linked above.

On behalf of Dr. Rahul Sengar and the other Einstein@Home scientists

Bruce Allen, Director, Einstein@Home

 

Comments

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
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This is fun! I wonder how

This is fun! I wonder how long that feeling will last! ;-)

Seriously folks : what a great project to be involved in.

Cheers, Mike.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

MAGIC Quantum Mechanic
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Sort of. I did the Galaxy

Sort of.

I did the Galaxy version when they first started but they seemed to like the members that just talked all day more than the ones doing the work.

I did sign up with this one just to  check it since I was an electronics engineer a couple decades ago.

Talked to Bruce over there yesterday.

KLiK
KLiK
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Really? Like you are for real

Really? Like you are for real about this?

If you need volunteers only, count me out. I mean, got so many projects in my life - not enough time for watching pulsar in front of the screen.

But tell you what: with all the GPU apps & AI going around, why don't you make a this a training project for the AI to pick up & continue the classification? If you think you can't, Asteroid@home is analyzing similar data to images & classifying asteroids. I bet, you can do this with AI on the GPUs.

Just my 50 cents.

lunkerlander
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I think it's a great way to

I think it's a great way to become more involved with the science goals of E@H. For the volunteers that are here for the science, this is a logical next step in participation with the project. I've registered and plan to contribute a what I can to the Zooniverse project.

What's sort of interesting, at least to me, is the strong interest in increasing one's personal RAC over the actual science goals of this project. Judging by the vast number of posts in the number crunching sections, and the fact that there is much less of an interest in the actual science goals of the projects.

At seti@home as well, there seemed to be relatively little interest by members in the Nebula posts, but much more on how to increase RAC, special apps, etc. in the number crunching sections. The "gamification" of BOINC and earning RAC seems to be a major source of interest and motivation for most people.

lunkerlander
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It's actually pretty relaxing

It's actually pretty relaxing to listen to some classical music or a podcast while classifying these potential pulsars from these Prepfold plots on the Pulsar Seekers Zooniverse project. It's also helped me understand a lot more about what's going on in our work units here at Einstein at home.

Bruce Allen
Bruce Allen
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Thanks for your comments and

Thanks for your comments and encouragement!

KLIK -- FYI we (and others) have developed neural network and deep learning classifiers to identify pulsars.  We are in fact using such tools to produce the candidate sets that are being used for Zooniverse.  But so far we have not found anything that can classify these filtered-down sets of candidates better than human beings.

 

 

Director, Einstein@Home

seewo
seewo
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How do you evaluate the

How do you evaluate the newly-published Time GPT? It do not directly help on the project, but is quite referential.

Tom Quigley
Tom Quigley
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Why does this project ask me

Why does this project ask me to register a new profile rather than use my existing Einstein@Home email and password? When I log in using the credentials I use to access Einstein@Home the Zooniverse "Pulsar Seekers" page doesn't recognize my Einstein@Home account ID and password when I go to login. 

Falconet
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Tom Quigley wrote: Why does

Tom Quigley wrote:

Why does this project ask me to register a new profile rather than use my existing Einstein@Home email and password? When I log in using the credentials I use to access Einstein@Home the Zooniverse "Pulsar Seekers" page doesn't recognize my Einstein@Home account ID and password when I go to login. 

Because the Zooniverse is not BOINC or Einstein@home. The Zooniverse is a completely different platform.