Join Einstein@home and Help Find Pulsars

Telescope maker Lee McDermot informs The Citizen Scientist that he has created a Society for Amateur Scientist team for the Einstein@home project.

Einstein@home is a World Year of Physics 2005 project designed to use idle time on computers around the world to assist in a search for the spinning neutron stars known as pulsars. The key to the program is data collected by the LIGO and GEO gravitational wave detectors.

Scott Little previously described the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in The Citizen Scientist (Black Holes and Gravitational Waves, 3 December 2004). The LIGO project is a joint effort between scientists at the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This first production run of Einstein@home searches for pulsars using the best 600 hours of data from LIGO's third science run. The project is supported by several organizations, including the American Physical Society (APS). You can find out details and sign up to participate at Einstein@home project.

Forrest M. Mims III