First Einstein@Home Discovery!
Submitted on 12 Aug 2010 18:01:58 UTC
We are delighted to announce that Einstein@Home has made its first discovery: a radio pulsar, found in data from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.
Details are available in a paper published online by Science today. Science has given us permission to post a copy of the abstract and paper here. They are also on the Science website here. The manuscript is also in the arXiv preprint archive (use the PDF link in the top right corner).
A press-conference webcast about this first discovery is also available.
The name of the pulsar is PSR J2007+2722. It is a 40.8 Hz isolated pulsar, 17,000 light years distant in the plane of the Galaxy, and is most likely a Disrupted Recycled Pulsar (DRP). If so, it is the fastest DRP yet discovered.
The Einstein@Home volunteers whose computers found the pulsar with the highest significance are Chris and Helen Colvin, from Ames Iowa and Daniel Gebhardt, Musikinformatik, Universitaet Mainz.
Additional information about the discovery is available on our web pages. I will also talk about it at the London Citizen Cyberscience Summit on September 2nd.
We thank ALL Einstein@Home volunteers for their support, and look forward eagerly to our next discovery.
Bruce Allen, Director, Einstein@Home
August 12, 2010
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Copyright © 2024 Einstein@Home. All rights reserved.
Comments
First Einstein@Home Discovery!
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Wow, this is big news. Congratulations to everybody who made this possible. And Helen, Chris and Daniel, I am soooooo jealous!
Michael
Team Linux Users Everywhere
Then the method is sound. Was
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Then the method is sound. Was it ABP2?
Tullio
Congratulations! I believe
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Congratulations!
I believe in Einstein@Home since February of 2005 and believe that is only first discovery of this project!
Congratulations with this
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Congratulations with this discovery!
Goes to show we're not doing this for nothing (or credits only). :-)
The NSF webcast is now
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The NSF webcast is now online.
BM
BM
Congratulations for the great
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Congratulations for the great work. ^_^
Regards from Spain
Congratulations to the
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Congratulations to the volunteers and the AEI staff involved in this discovery! I think this is a great day also for BOINC in general and the concept of citizen science.
Cheers
HBE
My heart skipped a beat or
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My heart skipped a beat or three !! This awesome .... :-) :-)
As Homer Simpson says : "it works on so many levels". It is indeed a multiple first and is a boon to the entire DC community. [ Having said that I am ever so cheesy grin that it was E@H - but that's my personal bias :-) ].
Looking at the detail, the discovery is at least mild on the weirdo scale - not in the middle of the pulsar garden - and I will eagerly await further definition of this beastie ....
[ I think I see harmonics ( of ~ 40Hz ) on the plot, more or less of equal strength and a suggestion of sidebands. I'm going to stare at the animations for a while ... ]
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) Ah I can imagine, I reckon, the annular/crater like morphology of the emission cone, with our line-of-sight trekking across the outer edge, dipping in, running across the crater floor ( not hitting the exact centre but not far off it either ) and then slipping up and over the other side ( with a mild asymmetry between the outer rim slopes on entry and exit ). The pulse profile is the equivalent of a surveyors elevation map along a traverse line/cut - likely not an actual physical feature of the pulsar surface but in the sense of variation in emission strength with surface position. The edge of the glowing yellow cone in the animation is the peak of the 'crater rim'.
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
As a long-time fan of this
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As a long-time fan of this project, I am excited to hear the excellent news! The sneak announcement of a possible second pulsar discovery (see time 22:00 to 22:35 in the NSF webcast) means the race is on. Congratulations to the lucky discoverers and let's keep crunching....
gravitysmith
RE: As a long-time fan of
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Yes I saw that, contributors from UK and Russia putatively. I also thought that this announcement may trigger a spot of gold-rush fever ..... there's pulsars in them thar hills! :-)
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) I think the E@H PALFA/ABP WU fraction ( of total distributed ) is going to increase too ???
( edit ) From here
So maybe any gold rush will influx from both sides : computing contributors and those that seek to harness .... thus with more ( catalytic ) power to both.
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
You know you've hit the big
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You know you've hit the big time when you are the featured story on the Coast To Coast AM Radio Show web site!
Congratulations!!
edit: I'm fairly certain that George Noory will make mention of it on tonights show which starts at 22:00 PDT. C2C has a huge audience, well, coast to coast, and globally via the Internet and satellite radio.
Also in Nature News:pulsar
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Also in Nature News:
pulsar
From the BBC also. This
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From the BBC also. This coverage will do distributed computing some good.
At the time of writing this, the article is second on the sites list of "Most popular" articles. Of course, early at the moment in the UK.
Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.
That's a really big news~!
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That's a really big news~! Congratulations to all~~
ps. Hope I'll be the next lucky guy ^oo^
Welcome To Team China!
9682 new hosts in the last 24
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9682 new hosts in the last 24 hours.
I'm disappointed at the rate
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I'm disappointed at the rate with which new volunteers are joining Einstein@Home. My hope was that the publicity would get us 1000 new volunteers per hour, for a week. The current rate is about 150 per hour.
Could anyone suggest what might be done to improve this, in the next days? One suggestion was, if you read an on-line article about E@H, please add something to the 'COMMENT' area below the article, saying "to sign up, point your web browser to http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/ and follow the instructions: Join Einstein@Home".
Director, Einstein@Home
RE: ...One suggestion was,
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This is a good idea!
Maybe we can add also "if you are already signed up but your RAC is <10... no chance for you to discover a new pulsar :-D"
P.S. congratulations !!!!!
RE: I'm disappointed at the
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What about contributors directly contacting one's local media outlets with a suggestion ( eg. provide E@H website link ) to follow-up/research the story, evidently in the science category. One couldn't/wouldn't have to speak on behalf of E@H, but simply give them a heads up on the discovery. Our national broadcaster ABC and most of the DownUnda major networks et al have some variety of online contact from the general public to their newsrooms available ( email, web form etc .. ). This could be virally effective.
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
This is soooooooooo awesome!
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This is soooooooooo awesome! Congrats to the volunteers and especially the scientific and technical teams,
Kathryn :o)
Einstein@Home Moderator
RE: What about contributors
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This is a good idea. Many local radio and TV stations and newspapers would probably be more interested in doing a story if they felt there was a local person who could talk about their participation in the project.
Director, Einstein@Home
RE: This is soooooooooo
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Thank you! Fun to find something, at last. And if you watch the webcast, you'll learn that we've already found a SECOND radio pulsar in Einstein@Home (but are not revealing many details yet!).
Director, Einstein@Home
RE: This is a good idea.
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Yup. Well that's me off and running then. Consider it done! :-)
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
RE: 9682 new hosts in the
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Yep. But 2/3 of these are from our top two contributers which throw away their hostids. I modified the server status page to exclude hosts of these accounts.
BM
BM
Still, 2283 new participants
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Still, 2283 new participants in 24 hours. This is the effect of the pulsar discovery.
RE: I'm disappointed at the
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Well, there may not be much we can do for now. With hot weather in the northern hemisphere, a lot of people have undoubtedly decided to shutdown their computers to help keep things cool. (I've had to shut down must of my computers for that, as I've indicated elsewhere.)
The rate of volunteers
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The rate of volunteers signing up is increasing. We're now up to 4800 in the first 24 hours, so about 200/hour. And in the past ten hours the rate has been 250/hour. That's an improvement!
Director, Einstein@Home
hi only just 'found out'
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hi
only just 'found out' about and this project 'by chance' on the internet and am happy for my 'idle computer time' to be used for such a wonderful project - have emailed a few of my friends to do the same
wonder if you've thought of a facebook page? - as friends of friends of friends can see it rather than me just relying on my friends to pass on the email to their friends etc
looking forward to the next discovery x
Hi all, I have just recently
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Hi all, I have just recently joined after seeing the report in the UK BBC local news website.
I must admit to being somewhat overwhelmed by the space "jargon".
Many congrats and thanks to the people who have found the pulsar, if it wasn`t for you I wouldn`t of known that I could do this with my pc.
Dee
RE: Hi all, I have just
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Welcome to Einstein@Home!
Yes, the jargon can be a bit frightening at first :-) , but don't hesitate to ask questions here, for example in the "Science" forum. Learning about Pulsars, neutron Stars, astrophysics and the strange world of general relativity is a big fun part of Einstein@Home.
(You might not be able to post messages initially in all forums here, but after returning the first validated results from your PC, you'll be able to do so as an active member. This is a anti-spam feature we had to adopt to stop spammers flooding the forum).
In the meantime, there are some links on the home page that might be useful to get an introduction into the science of Einstein@Home. I recommend especially the following:
http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/radiopulsar/html/index.php Info on the Pulsar search here at Einstein@Home
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/einstein.ram (Realplayer required) A movie on gravitational waves and detectors built to catch them.
http://www.einstein-online.info/ A portal for information on Relativity for the general public.
Happy crunching
HBE
Bravo, It's very
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Bravo,
It's very impressive!
I hope the project will go on discovering the universe.
Thanks!
Emmdeb
France Initiativ Team
PS: a link to a french article:
http://www.sciencesetavenir.fr/actualite/espace/20100812.OBS8430/un-pulsar-decouvert-par-des-amateurs.html
RE: RE: What about
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Bruce, 2 or 3 years ago I noted how many users there, BOINCwide, worldwide. If memory serves correctly, it was in the 1,500,000 to 1,800,000 range. BOINCStats now indicates there are 2,006,833 users of BOINC (for any project) worldwide. Thus, the approximate range of daily recruitment of users for any project is about 450 to 700 people (rounding the minimum down a little and the max up a bit).
Is there some stats page, BOINCStats or other, that tracks joining rates?
I wonder if BOINCStats is tracking active users or just those that have signed up (and possible never even crunched a single WU)?
Referring to your [url="http://einsteinathome.org/node/195234&nowrap=true#105447]first post on current new crunch join rate[/url], or any subsequent posts, well, I'd have to say that on the surface this current rate seems somewhat better than the overall, BOINCwide, join rate I'm estimating for over the past 2-3 years. On the other hand, there's the issue of whether those that join actually crunch (regardless of RAC0 and are retained.
I do not totally agree that [url="http://einsteinathome.org/node/195234&nowrap=true#105451"]this[/url] is a good idea. To "get the story out," it should come from the project scientists or, at the least, the project scientists should provide some pointers of what they'd like mentioned if the bulk of spreading the word is left to the crunchers.
I say this based on me reading of [url="http://www.amazon.com/Leading-Minds-Leadership-Howard-Gardner/dp/0465082807/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1281902559&sr=1-1"]Leading Minds: An Anatomy Of Leadership[/url] by Howard Gardner and Emma Laskin (1996). It's too bad there was not more to say in that book about leadership in the information age.
Along similar lines, consider that a magazine such as [url="http://discovermagazine.com/"]Discover[/url] has, IIRC, had few articles on Distributed Computing in the last 2-3 years. When SETI is in an article, it's the SETI Institute, with discussions with Seth Shostak, for example. Rarely, if ever, is the SETI@Home project included in such an article.
I believe project scientists need to take an active part in spreading the word: the "story" to get out there is your story, and crunchers could only assist in getting the word out in a limited fashion.
RE: Is there some stats
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There is, and yes.
Michael
Team Linux Users Everywhere
RE: I believe project
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Hence the sentence I wrote after the one quoted :
Bruce did actively lead - he flew to the US and back from Germany - to fit into an NSF web program slot which included the lead PALFA scientist James M. Cordes and BOINC originator David Anderson.
I hear what you say, Sarge. It' more a pragmatic issue of E@H not having the funds/time etc ( this applies to many E@H activities, indeed why E@H exists at all ). Ideally a dedicated press office/publicist/etc would be great.
DownUnda at least, the press is hard to distract from it's own profits, 'general interest' stories don't fly too well ( apart from cats stuck in trees ) and anything without footage is dead in the water. As science discoveries certainly don't fit the shock/horror/scandal paradigm one is left with viral/non-broadcast methods.
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
RE: I wonder if BOINCStats
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Both, as you could've seen on the BOINC combined stat. You mentioned the total number of users, while the active number is just one column to the right.
Well, you got me :) I did not
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Well, you got me :) I did not know about the project before so maybe you need either more discoveries or just more news!
have fun
I am a chef living in Cowes on the Isle of Wight, Enjoy looking at the night sky especially with my two small children, like to read Patrick O'Brian books, food books and those on Astronomy
Congratulations for your
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Congratulations for your discovery.This makes me want to return.And I am returning.
I have a Pentium 2.4 GHZ to this project.My dual cores are for WCG only.
By the way.Why isn't it possible to select ONLY the Arecibo binary pulsar search.
The other apps are greyed out...
RE: Congratulations for
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See here.
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
Well I managed to hit one of
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Well I managed to hit one of the Melbourne dailies :-)
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) It's in the weekly 'Learn' supplement/lift-out, evidently a pretty straight copy from here. That's all it took from me - a quick word or twenty with a web link - entered into their web form for 'news tips'.
( edit ) Oooh, heck! It's also turned up in another Melbourne daily I contacted - here. See how easy it is? Now, get to it team .... :-)
( edit ) AND the same story ran in Brisbane ( same media group ) - here. There! If I can do it, anyone can .... :-)
( edit ) AND in Sydney ( same media group ) - here. I'll have to take back a few of my earlier comments about the Aussie media now .... :-)
( edit ) Here's some other Aussie sites reporting on the discovery too ..... here, there and also here.
( edit ) Actually the timing on some releases appears to precede my contact with them, by my recollection. No matter ...... what matters is E@H is getting some good coverage DownUnda. Contributors ought still poke their local media outlets regardless ..... ;-)
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
Mike, good job. Anyone,
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Mike, good job.
Anyone, please don't take my earlier points as criticism of Bruce or the project.
Here's something I noticed last night, though, after seeing Mike's post before the edits:
Suppose someone reads the article inspired by Mike's contact. No mention in that brief blurb indicates E@H runs under BOINC and where to get BOINC.
OK, so the really interested people will figure, I can find that out, I'll Google Einstein@Home (or use Yahoo or some other search engine).
http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oGdGo.vGpMHCIBrmdXNyoA?ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-701&p=einstein%40home&SpellState=&fr2=sp-qrw-corr-top
Luckily, on Yahoo, the first hit is to the main page of the project site, and one can quickly find how to "join." The second hit, the Wiki, is filled with gobbeldygook. If I hadn't been using BOINC for years already, and if I weren't very interested, and if I weren't the type to sort to take the time to sort through it and find what I need, I would've stopped looking.
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=einstein%40home&aq=f&aqi=g-z1g7&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=C1MZYU71qTKrmHpP4M_nxkYkMAAAAqgQFT9DFpfM&fp=ea2cd8eab02d18af
It's not as good with Google. The second hit is the Wiki. (No, not a BOINC Wiki. A usual Wiki.) The third is better, going to the Max Planck Institute. Links from there are easy to follow.
Most or all of the rest of the hits are the current news about the 3 "citizen" scientists (interesting term).
What I see as goals that need work: how to get the story further out there about BOINC and easy-to-follow information about how to get the program. Then, the story about individual projects, E@H in particular or otherwise.
What if the e@h created a
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What if the e@h created a facebook page?
RE: What if the e@h created
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http://www.facebook.com/pages/EinsteinHome/111138845604847?ref=search. It still requires advertisement and easy to navigate information about how to obtain BOINC in order to attach to the project (or any other project).
Hi, with some delay in
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Hi,
with some delay in German on heise.de:
Angeschaltet bleiben für Arecibo
Michael
Team Linux Users Everywhere
http://pgj-new.pagesperso-ora
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http://pgj-new.pagesperso-orange.fr/0810-nouvelles.htm#pulsar
^^
i am french
I am a new member..
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I am a new member..
Welcome from Lost In Yonkers.
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Welcome from Lost In Yonkers.
To The Stars Thru Faith
Also in Germany there are
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Also in Germany there are some articles to be read, watch this :
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/weltall/0,1518,711702,00.html
RE: Also in Germany there
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There are about 25 on-line articles in German, as well as a number of printed newspaper stories during the past week. Do a 'Google News' search for "Einstein@Home" or "J2007+2722" to find them.
Director, Einstein@Home
RE: RE: What if the e@h
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The newer layout for pages on facebook appear to be limited as far as what information can be added. You can pretty much add anything you want on the older layouts. This particular BOINC page needs to somehow be referenced on any E@H page.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/BOINC/32672338584.
RE: RE: RE: What if the
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The "AJAX" pages are essentially WIKIs making their way into Facebook.
I know this because when I was an undergrad, I DJd for my college radio station. A little over a year ago, I created a page for fellow former DJs of the station. Recently, when I typed in the call letters to get to my page, an AJAX page for the station also showed the AJX page, which was pretty much the WIKI, word for word.
If E@H desires a more personal and direct presence on Facebook or any other social netoworking site, either the project admins should start the page there, or authorize someone, such as a current and good moderator to do so.
Greetings, new users! Was it
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Greetings, new users! Was it the articles about the discovery that brought you here?