First Pulsar Discovery By an @Home Project 70
pq writes "In a paper published today (abstract) in Science, astronomers are reporting the discovery of a radio pulsar in data acquired at the world's largest radio telescope and analyzed by hundreds of thousands of volunteers in 192 countries for the Einstein@Home project. This is the first scientific discovery by a distributed computing project, and specific credit is being given to Chris and Helen Colvin of Ames, Iowa, and Daniel Gebhardt of Germany." The claim that this is the first discovery to be made through distributed computing is hard to swallow; there are quite a few distributed projects out there, several of which have reported positive results, such as the discovery of the 47th known Mersenne number.
Re: (Score:1)
But did you use a distributed computing project to post?
Folding@Home (Score:5, Informative)
Judging by Folding@Home's long list of results [wikipedia.org] I'd say they would also dispute the 'first scientific discovery' claim.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'd say they would also dispute the 'first scientific discovery' claim.
Why would they dispute a claim that wasn't made? That'd just be silly.
The claim was first pulsar discovery, and I doubt Folding has any reason to dispute that.
Oh wait, I'm blind (Score:5, Funny)
Oh wait, it was claimed in something that wasn't the Title, which I guess makes me as stupid as the submitter.
que sera sera.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, even though you didn't RTF[SA], your comment was pretty much correct. The submitter was the only one who claimed it was the first discovery, period; the actual article only claimed it was the first discovery by Einstein@Home. Please take all of that massive guilt you now have and redirect towards the usual guilty parties, timothy and any submitter of an article he publishes... sigh.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Folding@Home (Score:5, Informative)
That's because the summary writer is an idiot. To quote the article:
The pulsar discovery, announced today on the journal Science's website, marks the first time Einstein @ Home has had a hit.
Re:Folding@Home (Score:5, Informative)
No idea how you combine those two into "The claim that this is the first discovery to be made through distributed computing".
Brain damage maybe?
Re: (Score:2)
No idea how you combine those two into "The claim that this is the first discovery to be made through distributed computing".
Brain damage maybe?
Idiot summary writer coupled with the typical incompetence of a Slashdot "editor".
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Tell me, do you feel somehow obliged to read stories from a "refuse pump"?
It's like the fat woman who complains how horrible the fried chicken tastes as she digs into the third bucket.
Re: (Score:2)
or the guy that complains that he was so horny he had to take her home and get her another bucket of chicken on the way...
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No idea how you combine those two into "The claim that this is the first discovery to be made through distributed computing".
Distributed summary writing, mostly.
Re: (Score:2)
No idea how you combine those two into "The claim that this is the first discovery to be made through distributed computing".
Distributed summary writing, mostly.
Two editors split the summary into three parts and each take one? That actually explains a lot!
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Hang on - "None has been found yet" IS a result. We have an experimentally determined upper limit on the alien signal density from space.
Why do people always expect a Eureka moment?
Re: (Score:2)
No idea how you combine those two into "The claim that this is the first discovery to be made through distributed computing". Brain damage maybe?
Just bad luck; today's Friday the thirteenth, and we all know it's bad luck to be superstitious.
Re: (Score:2)
While we're on the Folding@home topic... if you've got spare cycles of your machine to donate, how could you NOT send them to Folding@home?
Seriously, do you want to help find some fuzzy dot that is just like other dots in the sky or do you help to cure cancer, defeat aging, end diabetes, and unravel the mysteries of our biology?
Will mankind reach the next star in 500 years? I won't know, I'll be dead if you freaks don't get to figuring out aging! We'll figure out the outer space stuff after we've worked o
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed, one might even go as far as to say F@H started the E@H project - being that F@H started about 5 years prior - so if F@H wasn't successful at all in 5 years, its unlikely that E@H would have even taken off.
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
And SETI@Home started in 1999, a year and a half before Folding@Home, so if SETI@Home wasn't successful at all after a year and a half, it's unlikely that Folding@Home would have even taken off!
Oh, wait a minute ...
Re: (Score:2)
Folding@Home has previously discovered quasars? What? Maybe next time you should work on actually reading the entirety of the headline?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's a bad summary no doubt (I haven't read the fine article yet) but it clearly states "This is the first scientific discovery by a distributed computing project".
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, well it's wrong. The article nor the researchers make such a claim.
The pulsar discovery, announced today on the journal Science's website, marks the first time Einstein @ Home has had a hit.
That is what the article states.
Re: (Score:2)
It gets detected. Each work unit is processed by multiple clients. Given the number of computers involved it would be hard to fake a particular work unit because the likelihood of someone controlling the clients involved for that specific work unit is slim.
And what about F@H? (Score:2)
Space (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Space (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I'm surprised so many people believe there is intelligent life in the Universe.
You certainly wouldn't find any in the broadcast frequencies emanating from Earth. And if there were aliens who somehow picked up the radio signals coming from Earth, they would think that the United States is a dystopian tyranny governed by the
Re: (Score:2)
Just imagine what they would think if they were listening to Air America..........
Re: (Score:2)
That's the best you can come up with? "I know you are, but what am I?"
Jeez, we need to get a better class of right-wing tools around here.
Hanny's Voorwerp (Score:3, Interesting)
While not distributed computing, this isn't even the first crowdsourced scientific discovery; Galaxy Zoo discovered something so weird that people are still trying to figure out what it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanny%27s_Voorwerp
Re:Hanny's Voorwerp (Score:5, Informative)
A little bit too late to be exited? (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, BOINC allows people to use idle computing capacity. But if we need plenty of computing capacity today, it is not that hard to get it: It is much simpler to simply rent a few EC2 machines, or get a computing grant from Google/Y
Re:A little bit too late to be exited? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it really sad that distributed computing is so commonplace that it's resulting in discoveries in fields as disperse as biochemistry, abstract mathematics, and astronomy? That sounds like... the opposite of sad. Something went from being new and exciting but small scale to massive and available to many, and now many more projects are able to exploit it. That sounds exciting to me.
Sure Foldit is more interesting and exciting from the technological development standpoint. Is this some kind of zero-sum game where that necessarily means it eats up the excitement points of discovering pulsars with "traditional" distributed computing projcets?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Ten-plus years ago, the methodology itself was news even when there was no results. This news story is about the result coming from the methodology.
Maybe it's not as exciting as the news you'd like to hear, but it isn't sad in the slightest.
Mersenne number? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
The summary clearly means Mersenne primes, not Mersenne numbers.
The summary clearly means it was posted by Timothy :)
Though even his intended point I'd have to question... it's hard to call finding a Mersenne prime a real "scientific discovery". It's pretty purely mathematical, I'd think, as is any distributed algorithm that takes no input beyond the initial equations. Not that there haven't been actual discoveries - I just find the Mersenne prime search a pretty bad example.
Then again, I don't even think
Wrong on many counts (Score:3, Informative)
First off the claim in an associated release was the "first astronomical object" discovered, not first scientific discovery.
Secondly, even that's not correct. It's the first by a distributed project with an "@" in the name. Just because a project doesn't have @home or @thegym doesn't mean it's not distributed.
For example the PSC (Pulsar Search Collaboratory), which probably ought to be called psc@home or some such had an earlier hit.
http://www.universetoday.com/41006/high-school-student-discovers-strange-pulsar-like-object/ [universetoday.com]
If they want to claim that this was the first pulsar found by a distributed project with @ in the name from Arecibo based data then they're probably correct.
It's a cool find and a great project, don't want to come of as *completely* jaded and glad Arecibo is getting good use.
Re:Wrong on many counts (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing in the abstract or the linked article makes any claims of being the first any discovery. All this is about is that this particular project had its first hit. The rest is just sensationalist nonsense from the summary writer.
Re: (Score:2)
Did some scanning ... that 'first discovery' bit seems to be conflating physorg, universetoday and other press releases. In some they say first pulsar by distributed project (technically but just barely correct), in some they say first scientific discover by einstein@home (correct) and in some they say first astronomical discovery by einstein@home (also correct).
Somewhere along the line through sloppy editing this evolved to "first scientific discovery by a distributed project". Not a claim made by anybod
Jesus Christ, stop nerd-arguing. (Score:2, Insightful)
Jesus Christ, get a life, stop arguing about which distributed computing program discovered something first. If the summary was bad, then it was bad. You guys need to get out more and stop being dorks.
SETI@Home produced results! (Score:1)
The GPU's role got lost a bit in the story (Score:5, Informative)
One of the things that wasn't talked much about in the press conference was that the software heavily utilizes the GPU over the CPU when compatible hardware exists. I meant to bring it up somehow, but I was happy to be done and off camera after an hour. Media events, while interesting, require a lot of sitting still, being quiet, and not sneezing.
Yes, the technology for doing distributed computing is now over ten years old and I was a very early adopter. So as some people pointed out that's not new 'news' anymore per say. What is computationally newer is that the projects now don't just expand at Moore's law's rate anymore and as GPUs get better it will increase much faster for the next few years until leveling off at some new growth rate. Yes I know other things have been found, but finding a pulsar was really cool. Speaking with the scientists and science media all over the world and seeing the full international scope of this project over the last few weeks was also fascinating.
First? (Score:2)
. This is the first scientific discovery by a distributed computing project,
Checking all the links, it doesn't look like this claim is made anywhere. The MSNBC Cosmic Log article does say "The pulsar discovery ... marks the first time Einstein @ Home has had a hit," but that's it.
Re: (Score:2)
Not first distributed computer discovery (Score:1)
Prior to this, I only knew of two distributed computing projects, SETI and DESCHALL. DESCHALL was an effort in the mid 90's to prove to the government that their Data Encryption Standard (DES) was not a secure encryption type, and it was successful in 1996. 14 years before this event.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I did forget that one. Lol. I was not in anyway trying to imply that DESCHALL was the first distributed computer discovery. It probably isn't, but it came before this pulsar project so there is no way the pulsar project is the first. :)
This aint chopped liver (Score:1, Insightful)
Galaxyzoo's http://blogs.zooniverse.org/galaxyzoo/2009/07/11/unveiling-hannys-voorwerp-one-step-at-a-time/ finest hour and this is a distributed computer project except with humans as transistors.
I used to do these projects but not any more. (Score:2)
Back when throwing in my CPU cycles added a small to moderate increase to power consumption, I was happy to run these clients. But, the last time I checked, my gaming rig's power draw nearly tripled going from as low as I could get it (drives spun down, video idle, CPU clocked way down, etc.) to having all 4 cores and both graphics cards maxed. Nevermind the heat that comes pouring out and the noise when all the fans ramp up. It's not like the old days when loading up your Pentium 3 added an extra 20 wa
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The fight cancer at home project seems pretty worthwhile to me. And there are more projects on biochemistry, that your computer can help with. Think of the higher electricity bill as a donation to science, because that's what it is. And you're not making a donation to a foundation that's lobbying for bigger funds from the state, you're actually paying for direct work in a certain field. The ability of the population to control how money is spent on research is pretty much maximized with the @home model.
Also
Almost literally turns volunteers into Einsteins (Score:3, Funny)
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Hundreds of thousands to find a Pulsar? (Score:1)
Flash Modin (Score:1)