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07-06-11, 11:51 AM
Einstein@Home has discovered three new radio pulsars in data from the Parkes Multi Beam Pulsar Survey (PMPS). Congratulations to the Einstein@Home volunteers whose computers discovered these systems with the highest significance!

David Mason (Kansas City, USA)
Vadim Gusev (Petrozavodsk, Russia)
Christopher Sturgess (New York city, USA)
Trey Todnem (Tuscon, USA)
Keith Sloan (Nr Winchester, UK)
Terry Dudley (San Francisco, USA)
Jaska (Oulu, Finland)
Companion_Cube (Mönchengladbach, Germany) Administrators of the NEMO Cluster (Milwaukee, USA)


Further details about the newly-discovered pulsars may be found on this web page (http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/radiopulsar/html/PMPS_discoveries/), and will be published in due course. Bruce Allen Director, Einstein@Home

More... (http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/forum_thread.php?id=8956)

Steve Bohlen
07-06-11, 12:05 PM
Awesome! The credits earned by the discoverers range from over 592 million down to 14k. That just goes to show that there's a chance for all participants, not just those who mount incredible credit totals, to discover pulsars!

None of the discoverers are from SETI.USA (in fact, only a few of them are affiliated with a team). We need to change that. ;)

DrPop
07-07-11, 01:16 AM
...
None of the discoverers are from SETI.USA (in fact, only a few of them are affiliated with a team). We need to change that. ;)

I wholeheartedly agree, Steve. Problem is, credit on Einstein isn't just low...it sucks! I mean, what's a guy to do? Believe me, I am very torn about becoming an "Astronomy Cruncher" and just supporting my favorite projects and saying the heck with the high credits...ah, I dunno what route is better any more. I used to be a complete credit monger, but that is getting old after a while...all this electricity down the drain for what? Imaginary points from crunching numbers? At least those guys listed there have a pulsar or two to say "Hey - my computer did that. I spent my $$$ on something that was actually worthwhile!"

...so says the man who's GPUs and CPUs are crunching PG all out to suck up every last possible "easy credit" until the future credit drop. :p:((:confused::o

dan
07-07-11, 05:29 AM
I wholeheartedly agree, Steve. Problem is, credit on Einstein isn't just low...it sucks! I mean, what's a guy to do? Believe me, I am very torn about becoming an "Astronomy Cruncher" and just supporting my favorite projects and saying the heck with the high credits...ah, I dunno what route is better any more. I used to be a complete credit monger, but that is getting old after a while...all this electricity down the drain for what? Imaginary points from crunching numbers? At least those guys listed there have a pulsar or two to say "Hey - my computer did that. I spent my $$$ on something that was actually worthwhile!"

...so says the man who's GPUs and CPUs are crunching PG all out to suck up every last possible "easy credit" until the future credit drop. :p:((:confused::o


First off I think it's a real cool discovery, but I don't know why it's important. Second I'm with you, I'm ready to dump all these high value tasks and go to ones that do something other that look for oddities in numbers. The only High value project I like is Aqua, which could potential change computing.

denim
07-07-11, 08:39 AM
DrPop, I think I have very similar feelings about the Astronomy and Bio projects.

Steve Bohlen
07-07-11, 10:08 PM
First off I think it's a real cool discovery, but I don't know why it's important.

Granted, this is coming from a wannabe scientist, but...

The discovery of any new celestial object allows humans to better understand how the universe was created and is put together. There could be something very special about these new pulsars that we haven't seen before, which in turn may lead to new knowledge about the universe.

Einstein@Home also (mainly) searches for gravitational waves which, according to Einstein, must exist. Again, finding such waves would help us to understand the universe a little bit better than we do now.

Any project that could help us understand how we all got here is an important one in my book.

dan
07-08-11, 05:07 AM
Granted, this is coming from a wannabe scientist, but...

The discovery of any new celestial object allows humans to better understand how the universe was created and is put together. There could be something very special about these new pulsars that we haven't seen before, which in turn may lead to new knowledge about the universe.

Einstein@Home also (mainly) searches for gravitational waves which, according to Einstein, must exist. Again, finding such waves would help us to understand the universe a little bit better than we do now.

Any project that could help us understand how we all got here is an important one in my book.

Love astronomy and strongly support Einstein, but I really still don't see the value in the grand scheme of things. It's I think knowledge for the sake of knowledge, and won't matter much to us here on earth.

My daughters favorite quote is, "If you want to create an apple pie from scratch, first you must create the universe". Maybe someday we'll learn how to create an apple pie from scratch.

Mumps
07-08-11, 11:26 AM
My daughters favorite quote is, "If you want to create an apple pie from scratch, first you must create the universe". Maybe someday we'll learn how to create an apple pie from scratch.

Then, I'll assume you've run into this? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc) :)

dan
07-09-11, 05:18 AM
Then, I'll assume you've run into this? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc) :)

Of course! She's a physicist working on a PhD in Physics. They even played it at her under grad graduation.

DrPop
07-09-11, 03:30 PM
We could debate the merits of any single discovery Ad infinitum, but I strongly feel that any one of the Einstein discoveries (or MW or...etc) beats the heck out of all the worthless numbers I've been paying several hundred a month to crunch for the last year!!! :)) :p

WHY can't these "meaningful" projects get it through their heads that they would get so many more crunchers if their credit output was even remotely close to the "good credits" available on worthless projects? It CANNOT be that hard to up their credit. Like just change a single number in an algorithm and it would fix the problem. I'll bet it's like minutes worth of work. HOW can we get them to do it?:confused::(:p

Fire$torm
07-09-11, 06:07 PM
We could debate the merits of any single discovery Ad infinitum, but I strongly feel that any one of the Einstein discoveries (or MW or...etc) beats the heck out of all the worthless numbers I've been paying several hundred a month to crunch for the last year!!! :)) :p

WHY can't these "meaningful" projects get it through their heads that they would get so many more crunchers if their credit output was even remotely close to the "good credits" available on worthless projects? It CANNOT be that hard to up their credit. Like just change a single number in an algorithm and it would fix the problem. I'll bet it's like minutes worth of work. HOW can we get them to do it?:confused::(:p

I do not think the issue lies with the projects but rather the "Overseers" of BOINC development. It is quite obvious that there is a concerted effort to rein in the renegade projects with the free flowing credits. Bottom line for me is that when the BOINC devs fully implement the anemic credit schema, then that is the day I stop crunching. To geld the competitive aspect of this hobby is to remove all reason to spend what I have (not to mention some of the crap I had to go through to make it happen). And just as importantly all the hardware donations that many of us have received through this team would NEVER have happened if not for the competitive nature of this hobby.

YoDude9999
07-10-11, 11:48 AM
I do not think the issue lies with the projects but rather the "Overseers" of BOINC development. It is quite obvious that there is a concerted effort to rein in the renegade projects with the free flowing credits. .....well said.....and at the top is DA.