CITIZEN SCIENTISTS DISCOVER RARE PULSAR USING HOME COMPUTERS
Baku, August 16 (AZERTAC). Three citizen-scientists volunteering their personal computer time to a giant U.S. radio observatory have discovered a rare pulsar - an energetic young star that rotates dozens of times per second, VOA reports. The distant object was found among thousands of hours of data collected by the giant Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico. Developers of the computer-sharing program are hopeful other unusual space objects will be found through this worldwide network of astronomy enthusiasts.
It is called Einstein@Home. Supported with grants from the National Science Foundation, the program harnesses the enormous processing power of tens of thousands of idle home computers, sifting through massive stores of data collected by Arecibo, the world`s largest and most sensitive radio telescope.
An estimated quarter of a million volunteers in 192 countries have downloaded the free software to date, onto roughly half a million personal computers. The software quietly runs computations in the background, searching for unusual objects such as pulsars.
The newly-discovered pulsar - called J2007 - is a neutron star that spins on its axis 41 times per second. It`s located in Vulpecula, a constellation 17,000 light years from Earth. One light year is the distance a beam of light travels in a year -about 9 and a half trillion kilometers.
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