GRID
APPS - DISTRIBUTED APPLICATIONS VIA BOINC
With
the widespread of Internet, fast home computers, and high-bit-rate
lines, "distributed computing" also named "grid
applications" allow to researchers to benefit of the calculation power of a
supercomputer at low cost thanks to the collaboration of thousands and
millions of home computers connected to Internet and the idle cycles
of their processors.
Even if at first
sight these projects have no direct relation with our day-to-day life
- they are scientific projects, sometimes theoretical like simulations,
sometimes applied science -, their resultats are
part of our need to know, these "Big data", and other
knowledge bases to which we all refer one or another day, not only to
learn but also to go further, "standing on the shoulders of
giants".
What
you need to participate in these scientific projects is a computer
with an Internet connection, to download BOINC
Manager for managing grid applications, and to subscribe to one or
more projects depending on the power of your computer. These projects
are put at your disposal free of charge.
Let's
take only two examples of grid applications :
-
Einstein@Home
-
SETI@home (suspended since March 31, 2020)
among
more than 130
existing projects related to mathematics, simulations, astronomy,
astronautics, physics, seismology, genetics, meteorology, environment,
neurosciences, computing, etc.
Einstein@Home
has been developed by astronomers with the objective to discover pulsars and gravitational waves.
It is linked to radiotelescopes and several LIGO detectors.
Starting
in 2005, the Year of Physics, like most of grid applications it is
available for most operating systems.
Thanks
to Einstein@Home several web users have already allowed astronomers to discover
pulsars including gamma pulsars that researchers are now studying in depth.
Amateurs
can access to scientific papers via the project
website.
*
Altough
suspended since March 31, 2020, SETI@home
is one of the oldest grid application, starting in 1999.
A
short community of 200 professional astronomers are involved in long-term
programs searching evidences of extraterrestrial signal or intelligence in the universe,
known under the acronym of SETI as it was quickly confirmed a direct
contact was impossible to establish or very uncertain (CETI).
What
arguments justify this fundamental research ?
-
Bioastronomers believe the life has appeared in the cosmos wherein the
optimist remind us there must be an infinity of life forms,
-
What happened in the Earth coffin may happen elsewhere, even if life has
evolved to species much different from what we know,
-
At last we have to assume that human intelligence is not the top of the
evolution.
Conclusion
say bioastronomers, they must be more advanced civilizations than ours
in the universe able to transmit voluntary of not electromagnetic waves
we could detect.
Starting
with these assumptions scientists conducted over fifty SETI projects.
With high and low according political hazards, since 1960 they never had
cancellation of these researches.
Until
2020, each of us were also in position to help SETI.
If
you owned a computer you could even process yourself raw data from SETI@home
project (supported by BOINC since 2006) and send back your results to Berkeley
University and SETI community. Over 600000 users were actively involved in this quest.
According
to experts, a next day SETI will reborn.
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