By volunteering your computer’s downtime to distributed computing projects you can help fight cancer, monitor seismic activity, scan the stars for alien life or even crack encrypted Nazi messages. The project is attempting to prove Einstein’s theory that when celestial events such as exploding stars or colliding black holes occur, they create waves that alter space and is based on the BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) platform that hosts a variety of distributed computing projects. To participate all you have to do is run a screensaver that uses your computer’s downtime. harnesses a user’s spare or unused computer processing cycles to compute raw data pulled from gravitational wave detectors. The discovery was made by three computers (two in the United States and one in Germany) participating in the distributed computing project. The object is called a disrupted binary pulsar and is unique due to its relatively low magnetic field, according to a BBC report.
A network of hundreds of thousands of home computer users recently discovered a rare celestial object by donating their computers’ downtime to a worthy cause.
