The lucky ones!

Whenever Einstein@Home finds a new neutron star, there is always one workunit in which that discovery "stands out" from the noise with the highest statistical significance.  The volunteers whose computers processed that workunit receive framed discovery certificates, signed by myself and by the Principal Investigator of the experiment/collaboration that provided the data.  Over the past decade, we have sent out more than a hundred of these, and we are now preparing a new batch.   If you are interested, here is a photo album showing our past "lottery winners", along with their discovery certificates.

Bruce Allen
Director, Einstein@Home

Comments

Joe Buck
Joe Buck
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I'm interested. Count me

I'm interested. Count me in.

 

Markus Windisch
Markus Windisch
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Ian&Steve C. schrieb:also no

Ian&Steve C. wrote:

also no need to make this some kind of sociopolitical issue bringing up gender... there's no bias on the part of the project here. the fact that there are no women in the list only tells us that there are far less women contributing.

Thanks. At first I thought she's making a joke but sadly this wasn't satire.

Gerard de Groot
Gerard de Groot
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NinjaBooKitty wrote: Very

NinjaBooKitty wrote:

Very disappointed to see all men. I have been on this project since 2007 and not very actively engaged, so my exclusion absolutely makes sense. But there had to have been some women who qualify. And they should have been included in this album.

You only  come in the album when you find a pulsar.

So if you participate for 10 years with a fast computer and you have not found a pulsar you do not come in the album.

It is not your participation that counts but your discovery of a pulsar!!

I you want your picture in the album just find a pulsar and upload a picture of your certification when you received it.

 

 

 

Peter Denomy
Peter Denomy
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That'd be great if I qualify.

That'd be great if I qualify. Thanks.

Brian
Brian
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Mr. Allen,    If I qualify

Mr. Allen,

   If I qualify I would be honored to receive a discovery certificate.

V/R

SFC (Ret.) Brian Campbell

Fate, Texas

Michal Plichta
Michal Plichta
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I really like idea, and of

I really like idea, and of course I the lucky one I would like to received cert!

zooxit
zooxit
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If your computer 'discovers'

If your computer 'discovers' the neutron star/pulsar.. Do you get the certificate automatically or you have to apply yourself in some webpage/list?

Happycruncher

Tim Teino
Tim Teino
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Very motivating! Count me in,

Very motivating! Count me in, if I'm lucky enough to produce a nice result :)

Tim

Francis Mollard III
Francis Mollard III
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That is a wonderful idea and

That is a wonderful idea and certificate.  I hope I'm a lucky lottery winner.  I always try to let my computer analyze as much data as possible to help the overall cause and mission of the BOINC programs.

John
John
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I would absolutely love this.

I would absolutely love this. Hope I qualify. Thank you!

Starlight Infoworks
Starlight Infoworks
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Please review my completed

Please review my completed tasks to see if I qualify.

Such a certificate would be most welcomed in my SOHO.

Kind regards,

Jacques St-Arnaud

AdiS
AdiS
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Hi, yes, I'm interested

Hi,

yes, I'm interested that certificate.

 

Best regards,

Adam

Edward
Edward
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How does one participate? I

How does one participate? I have made my HomeServer available to you for years now, and the certificate would certainly enhance my office decor. Sign me up.

 

Darwin Deivy Zambrano Castellano
Darwin Deivy Za...
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I hope to be one of the lucky

I hope to be one of the lucky ones! Anyway, all of us and our computers are doing a really good job! 

Falconet
Falconet
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Edward wrote:How does one

Edward wrote:

How does one participate? I have made my HomeServer available to you for years now, and the certificate would certainly enhance my office decor. Sign me up.

 

 

You already participate. If you happen to be the lucky one to find a pulsar/gravitational wave, you'll get one of these certificates.

 

By the way, the last time one of your computers participated was on January 2015, unless you are using another account.

Daniel Schloss
Daniel Schloss
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A guy can only hope.

A guy can only hope.

lonelyringer6
lonelyringer6
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I'd love to have such a

I'd love to have such a certificate if I qualify. Thanks for making the opportunity known.

INDEP
INDEP
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I would be very honored to

I would be very honored to receive your certificate! Please sign me up.


 

mones
mones
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me three!  psyche!! no but

me three!  psyche!! no but for realz...I'd like to earn one too!  

Tony Carter
Tony Carter
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RAC: 3906

I would love to be part of

I would love to be part of the team of those that helped find a new neutron star.

Albert Argilaga, Ph.D.
Albert Argilaga...
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Great initiative! I just put

Great initiative! I just put my other projects in "no new tasks" so I increase my chances to get a neutron star discovery certificate.

Bernd Machenschalk
Bernd Machenschalk
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zooxit wrote:If your computer

zooxit wrote:

If your computer 'discovers' the neutron star/pulsar.. Do you get the certificate automatically or you have to apply yourself in some webpage/list?

The result your computer returns to our server contains the ids of your host and user account. When this result marks a new discovery, we'll contact you, first using the email address that you signed up with, and the message system on our website. If this doesn't work for some reason (e.g. your provider doesn't know your address anymore, or you don't respond within a few weeks), we may also try different ways to contact you (e.g. social media), using info you provided e.g. in your profile. Don't worry, if you regularly read email (and check the spam folder) on the address you provided, you will get notified. We'll ask for the postal address to send the certificate to, and whether we can publish your (real) name on our website and in publications related to the discovery.

Unless, however, you are donating computing power via Science United. One core aspect of Science United is anonymity. You just contribute to (an area of) science, instead of individual projects. AFAIK you don't know the exact projects you're contributing to, and the projects don't know you. There is no way for us to trace back a particular result to an individual contributor of Science United. If you want to take part in this particular lottery of this particular project, you have to join this project directly.

BM

Bernd Machenschalk
Bernd Machenschalk
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NinjaBooKitty wrote:Very

NinjaBooKitty wrote:

Very disappointed to see all men. I have been on this project since 2007 and not very actively engaged, so my exclusion absolutely makes sense. But there had to have been some women who qualify. And they should have been included in this album.

FWIW there is a woman, left on the picture showing two people (photo #16, second-to-last of the landscape-oriented photos). Actually this was of the first pulsar discovery on E@H, and the first singular discovery of volunteer computing in general!

Indeed we need more women to contribute, that would raise the chance of discoveries!

BM

adele
adele
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Posts: 1
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RAC: 0

Great idea... I will never

Great idea... I will never earn one cause I only have 1 computer running when it is idle, but as I said a great idea to award people these when/if they earn them and by the way I am a woman who has been contributing since 2009 lol

Stargazer5154
Stargazer5154
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Count me in if possible!

Count me in if possible!

Amos Ahams Akor
Amos Ahams Akor
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I humbly wait for my

I humbly wait for my certificates.

Jim Bonds
Jim Bonds
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It appears a few missed the

It appears a few missed the part that requires you system to find a target and once it is identified and recorded. You will be notified about the certificate. So even though we are "ALL" interested, it is simple luck along with how many systems you have crunching during their downtime as to whether or not you get the certificate.

So I wish us all the best of luck, and whether or not you get it your participation does help so as a person in my book you all are already winners!

Reguards,

Jim Bonds.  

"There is no such thing as darkness, it is simply the lack of light"

Markus Windisch
Markus Windisch
Joined: 23 Aug 21
Posts: 61
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Which Applications are

Which Applications are necessary to help finding a neutron star? Right now I have all Applications activated:

Binary Radio Pulsar Search (Arecibo)
Binary Radio Pulsar Search (Arecibo, GPU)
Gamma-ray pulsar binary search #1
Gamma-ray pulsar search #5
Gamma-ray pulsar binary search #1 (GPU)
Gravitational Wave search O2 Multi-Directional
Gravitational Wave search O2 Multi-Directional GPU
Gravitational Wave search O3 All-Sky

 

Can "gravitational wave search" f.e. lead to a new neutron star, too? This site says they can make us find pulsars, but does is this work help raising the chances to get a certificate?


Thanks :)

 

/edit: by the way, help pages linked on this site aren't working
Bernd Machenschalk
Bernd Machenschalk
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Einstein@Home is searching

Einstein@Home is searching for spinning neutron stars with all searches. However, the chances and benefits are varying.

The ultimate goal is to find a "continuous gravitational wave pulsar" with a "Gravitational Wave search". This search has been going on for the whole lifetime of E@H, and that was why E@H was started in the first place in 2005. We have always been running the most sensitive searches for this kind of signal in the data from the most sensitive GW detectors. However, no signal was found so far. But a detection will likely be rewarded with a Nobel prize, and (if you agree) your name will be published in the publication, and imagine the certificate you'll get!

The Radio pulsar search has found quite a few unique pulsars first for a while, where other search methods of other radio astronomers failed or were slower. However, their search methods have improved over time, also with help from our scientists and engineers. So E@H was falling behind a bit, and we could only announce "re-detections" of then already known pulsars. So also scientists lost a bit interest in the results of the E@H search pipeline.

The Gamma-Ray pulsar searches are the ones that got the most attention recently, as there seem to be new discoveries on a rather regular basis. However, it looks like the low-hanging fruits have been taken by now, and the rate of discoveries slowed down a bit.

With some more people that have been hired recently, the focus is shifting from the Gamma-Ray pulsar search to the Radio pulsar search again. And with some new data that will arrive in the next few weeks we'll ramp that up again, and we hope for some more discoveries there.

BM

Bernd Machenschalk
Bernd Machenschalk
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BTW: The "Help" page does

BTW: The "Help" page does work for me (logged in, but since you are writing this, you should be as well). What exactly doesn't work? What Browser do you use? Could some local adblocker interfere?

BM

Markus Windisch
Markus Windisch
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Thanks for this detailed

Thanks for this detailed answer, nice. Very interesting.

Bernd Machenschalk wrote:

BTW: The "Help" page does work for me (logged in, but since you are writing this, you should be as well). What exactly doesn't work? What Browser do you use? Could some local adblocker interfere?

When I click "help" on top of this page it shows me this link for FAQ: https://einsteinathome.org/de/content/faq

No Adblocker involved.

Bernd Machenschalk
Bernd Machenschalk
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Ah, yes, the FAQ link on the

Ah, yes, the FAQ link on the help page is broken. Thanks for reporting! We'll fix that.

BM

Falconet
Falconet
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Bernd Machenschalk

Bernd Machenschalk wrote:

With some more people that have been hired recently, the focus is shifting from the Gamma-Ray pulsar search to the Radio pulsar search again. And with some new data that will arrive in the next few weeks we'll ramp that up again, and we hope for some more discoveries there.

 

New data from which radio telescopes? Will BRP4 be available for AMD and Nvidia GPUs or will it remain limited to Intel GPUs and Android devices?

 

Thanks!

Bernd Machenschalk
Bernd Machenschalk
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Our scientists are reaching

Our scientists are reaching out for data from FAST and MeerKAT, and are developing ways to pre-process it to make it suitable for the RP App on Einstein@Home. This will take some time. But when done, the resulting data packages will be too large to be processed by such small devices as Android mobiles, we'll have to process it with more powerful GPUs.

OTOH there's still quite a bit of Arecibo data left that we wouldn't get through in reasonable time with the currently used processors, so we'll likely open the BRP4 search for more architectures in the near future, but probably mainly CPUs.

BM

Falconet
Falconet
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Thank you for that

Thank you for that information. I hoped BRP4 would also be available for GPUs so we can get that done but that's fine.

I'm looking forward to these new projects.

 

Bruce Allen
Bruce Allen
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Thank you to everyone who has

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this thread! A couple of late comments:

The only way to get one of these certificates is to be one of the two people whose computers crunch a "discovery" workunit.  That's just a matter of luck, like winning a lottery.  You can't "make it happen", although you can improve your odds by crunching more workunits. This is the same as improving your odds of winning a lottery by buying more tickets.

Regarding gender, the very first Einstein@Home discovery, more than a decade ago, was made by a couple, Helen and Chris Colvin, both of whom are IT professionals.  But from what I can tell, the majority of Einstein@Home volunteers are male, and that imbalance is reflected in the "lottery winners".   I would like to encourage more women to participate, and hope that with time the balance will improve.

 

Bruce Allen

 

 

Director, Einstein@Home

Rachael Lines
Rachael Lines
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I got very excited reading

I got very excited reading this thread, really looking forward to hearing about new findings. 

 


Started crunching in 2022 - a small cog in a very big wheel.