Dear Einstein@Home volunteers,
good news, everyone! We're currently preparing the next batch of discovery certificates for the volunteers whose computers discovered a new radio pulsar.
Each of the lucky volunteers gets two framed certificates. These are signed by the Einstein@Home director, Prof. Dr. Bruce Allen, and either the PALFA chair Prof. Dr. James Cordes or the principal investigator of the PMPS, Prof. Dr. Andrew Lyne. One certificate always is in English, the other one is in the volunteer's native tongue (should that be English, we'll send two identical English certificates).
We've recently printed the individual certificates and send them off to our project partners in the US and the UK for their signatures. We got the signed certificates back earlier this week and now started framing them. At the bottom of this post, there's a list of all volunteers that will receive their certificates in this shipping batch. Should your computer have discovered a pulsar (look for your name here or here), check your email inbox, and make sure you reply to our official email.
This is what we started off from. Signed certificates at the bottom right, part of the pile of frames at the back of the table.
Now, getting more frames and putting each of the certificates into a frame.
All certificates are framed. You'll note there are some certificates left un-framed on the bottom right of the table. These will be finished later this week as we ran out of frames and have to pick up the new ones we ordered a while ago.
The frames will be packed probably next week and will then be sent to the volunteers all around the globe. When you received your certificate, please reply here so that we know everything went well. You might have to be patient, though. From the previous batch we know that it can take up to a few weeks for the certificates to arrive in the US or in Australia.
This batch includes certificates for the following volunteers: "Metod, S56RKO" (the one in Slovene), "KeithSloan", "Mel S Stark", "Philemon1752", "pax", "BobB", "Harald", "Fletuitus Maximus", "Guzel Sanatlar Saatchi & Saatchi", "Andrew Fullford", "pavlo" (the certificate in Ukrainian will be in the next batch), "Nemo", "ATLAS AEI Hannover", "Dusan Pirc", "Riaan Strydom", "Brian Adrian", "Bean13", "Frederick J. Pfitzer", "boinc_qc", "Eric", and "bench-seater".
The batch after this one will include certificates for "pavlo" (Ukrainian certificate), "Josha", "SF Chance", "Aku Leijala", "Augusto Cortemiglia", "Paul Frei", "Jyrki Ojala", "Matthias", and "spacemort".
Cheers,
Benjamin
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Maybe a discoverer can name a star or something?
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Maybe a discoverer can name a star or something?
Unfortunately, this is not possible. Pulsars are "named" by their celestial coordinates. So, PSR J2007+2722 (the first Einstein@Home discovery) is the pulsar (PSR) at 20 hours and 07 minutes of right ascension and +27 degrees and 22 arcminutes of declination. Right ascension and declination form a a celestial coordinate system similar to the one on Earth, based on geographic longitude and latitude.
For the pulsars discovered by Einstein@Home, however, the names of the volunteers will appear in the scientific discovery publications along with the pulsars.
Cheers,
Benjamin
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I am using the name Dingo for BOINC. Do you ask for my real name if I discover anything so the certificate is in my name ??
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Hi Dingo!
I am using the name Dingo for BOINC. Do you ask for my real name if I discover anything so the certificate is in my name ??
Yes, that is exactly what we do. We will send you an email and will ask for your permission to use your real name on the discovery web pages and in the scientific publication. If you don't want that for whatever reason, we'll of course not publish your real name. We will use your real name on the certificate of discovery, unless you'd rather like to see your BOINC name there.
We will also ask for a mailing address, so that we can send you the certificate. As you've seen in the pictures, these are not just pdf files, but real objects made from metal, glass, and plastic.
Cheers,
Ben
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My wife just said you should send me one so I will quit building computers 
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These certificates look great! I'd like to congratulate the thousands of other users, too. Your electricity bills and hardware are essential in weeding through the data so a lucky few can make those cool discoveries.
Has anyone bothered to calculate what the processor time contributed so far would have cost the MPI/UW-M? Must be a fortune...
Well done people!
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Has anyone bothered to calculate what the processor time contributed so far would have cost the MPI/UW-M? Must be a fortune...
A couple of years ago I saw an estimate for electricity costs alone - millions $USD per year I think. Put simply : these discoveries would not have occurred at all but for the generosity of contributors! :-)
Cheers, Mike.
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Has anyone bothered to calculate what the processor time contributed so far would have cost the MPI/UW-M? Must be a fortune...
I've estimated that the electricity costs alone are around 8 million US dollars/year (or Euros/year in Europe, where electricity costs more) to replace our volunteer's computers with dedicated machines. Thus over the seven years that the project has been running, this is worth about 50 million US dollars. The costs of the hardware are difficult to estimate, but are probably comparable.
Note that the incremental electrical costs contributed by our volunteers are smaller than this. The costs above are an upper bound: they assume that volunteers are ONLY using their computers to run Einstein@Home. Since most volunteers use their computers for other purposes as well, the actual costs they incur are smaller than what I have estimated, since they come only from the extra power used by the CPU when running Einstein@Home code rather than sitting idle.
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The sexy certificates make it all worthwhile :)
My power bill last 3 month quarter was 900 bucks but I figure only about 300 of that was computers. My missus desperatley wishes/nags for them to be somewhere other than the corner of the lounge room lol and wont let me get more.
Getting that special email from the boffins in the lab and then getting a certificate to prove it makes the nagging and the power bill all worthwhile.
It is a bit of a shame we cant name our pulsars but then again could you imagine some of them names that a bunch of (essentially) computer geeks might come up with :)
It is a bit of a shame we cant name our pulsars but then again could you imagine some of them names that a bunch of (essentially) computer geeks might come up with :)
The International Astronomical Union didn't come up with the names Geminga, Crab Pulsar, Vela Pulsar, or The Magnificent Seven. These names stuck because these are objects often talked about that few could remember the systematic names for. Still, even the Hulse–Taylor binary pulsar is more known as PSR B1913+16.
Now if you could get Stephen King to write a novel about one of our pulsars ... maybe then a proper given name would stick :)
Amazing! I always have the hope what my computers will detect something one day ^^
Amazing! I always have the hope what my computers will detect something one day ^^
These certificates are definitely unique in the BOINC world!
(edit)
However, a gravity wave detection would be in a different ballpark -- just dreaming.
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Team Linux Users Everywhere
Woaoh, they look really nice.
I'm in a process building a home "super-computer" with 2 to 4 nvidia K20... I'll dedicate a lot more of cruching time to einstein@home only to have a better chance to discover a pulsar and receive one of those beautyful certificates :-))
Hi all,
just a quick update on the current batch of certificates I described in the first post of this thread. As already mentioned, we waited for some remaining frames, which arrived on Friday. Today, I could frame all remaining certificates. Here they are:
The next step is to sen them to you guys out there, which is why the frames need some nice padding. They are first wrapped separately in bubble wrap…
…then the two certificates for each lucky volunteer are bundled and wrapped in another two or three layers of bubble wrap. These nicely cushioned packages will then be send away in a sturdy cardboard box (not necessarily with the carrier whose name is on the boxes)
.
We expect these to be send out some time later this week. I'll post another short update when that has happened.
Cheers,
Benjamin
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That's really nice, though the naming convention seems weird. The names would only apply from Earth being the origin.
If you were to try and find these from other locations, are the names not mute? You'd have to calculate where earth is, where you are and triangulate. Should there not be a universal location name?
jc
Should there not be a universal location name?
Don't know if astronomers have found the the exact location of the big bang singularity in today's universe. I think that is the logical start of a truly *universal* coordinate system :)
Should there not be a universal location name?
Don't know if astronomers have found the the exact location of the big bang singularity in today's universe. I think that is the logical start of a truly *universal* coordinate system :)
scientists have not found such a location b/c it does not exist. there is no absolute center of the universe. ;-)
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I would really like one of them...it would look fab on my wall in my crafting room...that is where my laptop "works"
Any estimates out there that might tell how many of these pulsars are still yet to be found? My computer found one but it was already known :-(.
Any estimates out there that might tell how many of these pulsars are still yet to be found?
Hi,
this question can be answered only by looking at the results of computer simulations of the pulsar population in our Galaxy. These have been done for the PALFA survey, which provides the "Arecibo data" for Einstein@Home. The first (somewhat optimistic) set of these simulations led to the assumption, that "about 1000 new pulsars will be found in the [P]ALFA survey" (see the paper here. So far, the PALFA survey has found of order 100 new pulsars. Of these, 23 were found by Einstein@Home, which joined the PALFA consortium in 2009, four years after the start of the survey.
The survey is still ongoing, looking at new parts of the sky with the very sensitive Arecibo telescope. Many of these observations will allow us to find new pulsars, but personally, I think it is very tricky to give a good estimate of the actual number of pulsar still to be detected. But of order 300 might be rough estimate.
Einstein@Home is only one of several pipelines processing the PALFA data, so any given pulsar might not be found by Einstein@Home first. But – and that is the unique feature of Einstein@Home - our pipeline has the highest sensitivity to pulsars in very tight binary systems. If there's a pulsar out there, orbiting the common centre of mass with a companion in a very short time, Einstein@Home is most likely to find such a rare system.
Cheers, Benjamin
P.S.: As you might have seen on our detailed BRP processing page, Einstein@Home is currently looking at Arecibo data from a different part of the sky. Before (and this is where we found the 23 pulsars) we analyzed data taken when Arecibo was looking toward the inner regions of our Galaxy. These inner-Galaxy telescope pointings are in the first row of the sky plots (black background) at the bottom of the page.
Since a couple of weeks now, we've been analyzing data taken when Arecibo was looking toward the outer regions of our Galaxy. These are displayed in the bottom two rows of the sky plots. Since the density of stars and pulsar progenitors is lower towards the outer Galaxy, I'd expect to find less pulsars while we're analyzing this part of the data. There will be however, fresh and completely new observations of the inner Galaxy available soon, which should contain more previously unknown pulsars.
thanks.
Beautiful thing just a pity that I did not get lucky not count.
But when nässten mall I have indeed fortunate to be there.
:-)
do you will send to ALL volunteers? :)
We send certificates to those volunteers whose computers have found a new radio pulsar. So we do not send certificates to all volunteers :-)
For all others, there's the possibility to print a certificate of computation at this link. You have to be logged in for this to work.
Cheers,
Benjamin
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nice work :)
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who or what is hugo and what does it mean
i had a dream with a old lady consistantly telling me im a hugo and i responded no im not .... what is hugo what does it mean. the only time i heard of hugo was a hurricane years ago
i had a dream with a old lady consistantly telling me im a hugo and i responded no im not .... what is hugo what does it mean. the only time i heard of hugo was a hurricane years ago
Eli, I didn't see the reference but then again I didn't read all the posts.
Based on the thread we're in I assume hugo refers to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award
Joe
i had a dream with a old lady consistantly telling me im a hugo and i responded no im not .... what is hugo what does it mean. the only time i heard of hugo was a hurricane years ago
Eli, I didn't see the reference but then again I didn't read all the posts.
Based on the thread we're in I assume hugo refers to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award
Joe
Then again there could be Hugo :-)
Hi all,
I'm sorry that it took longer than initially planned, but today we've finally shipped the discovery certificates. The should arrive within the next couple of weeks depending on where you're living. In the past we've seen that parcels to the USA or to Australia might take a few weeks, so please be patient.
This shipment contains certificates for: "Metod, S56RKO" (the one in Slovene), "KeithSloan", "Mel S Stark", "Philemon1752", "pax", "BobB", "Harald", "Fletuitus Maximus", "Guzel Sanatlar Saatchi & Saatchi", "Andrew Fullford", "pavlo" (the certificate in Ukrainian will be in the next batch), "Nemo", "ATLAS AEI Hannover", "Dusan Pirc", "Riaan Strydom", "Brian Adrian", "Bean13", "Frederick J. Pfitzer", "boinc_qc", "Eric", and "bench-seater".
Cheers,
Benjamin
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How do i find out if i have found a pulsar ?, on my account there is a "Certificate of Computation" does this mean i found a pulsar ? if someone could send me a messsage to explain that would be great. :)
How do i find out if i have found a pulsar ?, on my account there is a "Certificate of Computation" does this mean i found a pulsar ? if someone could send me a messsage to explain that would be great. :)
no, a certificate of computation simply acknowledges the amount of raw data your machine(s) have processed for the BRP search, whether you've actually found a pulsar or not...and i suppose it also includes any amount of raw data you processed for the gravitational wave and/or gamma ray pulsar searches.
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i want one too!
This is cool!! A huge congratulations to all of the certificate recipients!!
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