Ba-Doink-a BOINC

I don't often do this, but there is a gnarly piece of software that I want to recommend that everybody use. It's called BOINC, and it's awesome. I actually used to use it years ago, but between all my traveling and moving I kind of forgot about it, and I've just rediscovered it. It's basically a screen saver program, but not just a pretty one. It's useful. What you do is you download the BOINC software, and then choose a project. The instructions are all there on the homepage. But what BOINC does is this: When your computer is idle, it comes on just like your normal screen saver would, and it uses your computer processor to perform calculations needed by various scientific projects which you can choose from, showing you a neat little visual of the calculations being performed as the screen saver. What's so powerful about this tool is that thousands of people doing calculations on a project offers more computing power than is possible to the individual scientific programs on their own, so you can help them to do some really incredible things.

I myself run a project called SETI@home, which I've I had a link to on my sidebar forever and still managed to forget about all this time, dur. But as an example of how BOINC works, SETI@home is the radio signal project for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) people. You may have heard of them from that movie Contact, in which Jodi Foster represented them, based on the book by Carl Sagan. So anyway, what they do is point their radio telescopes at different points in the sky for periods of time, and record space noise of all sorts. They record this space noise in huge batches and parcel it up, then send it out to everybody running their project via BOINC. BOINC, with the help of your computer processor while you're not using it, then sifts through this raw data, searching for patterns and signals, and sends the results back to SETI. If your computer is the one that finds indication of Extra-Terrestrial radio signals, you'll be famous. Here's what my screen saver looks like:

Of course I understand that a lot of people might think that this is a loopy project, with about a zero chance of ever finding anything meaningful. To you people, I say up yours. Aliens is cool. But, you know, there are plenty of other projects to choose from should the search for the answer to the most profound question we have (are we alone?) not be your particular cup of awesome.

There is a nice one called Rosetta@home, which needs your help to determine the 3-dimensional shapes of proteins in research that may ultimately lead to finding cures for some major human diseases. There is also one called climateprediction.net, which is the largest experiment to try and produce a forecast of the climate in the 21st century because climate change, and our response to it, are issues of global importance, affecting food production, water resources, ecosystems, energy demand, insurance costs and much else. There is a broad scientific consensus that the Earth will probably warm over the coming century; climateprediction.net should, for the first time, tell us what is most likely to happen.

But there is a whole list of such non-profit projects you can choose from over on the BOINC project page, so you can choose one that you feel is important, regardless of the ultimate importance of the Alien question.

Comments

[Gary]

I had the seti thing running for a long time years ago. I think I tried the protein one also for a little while.

[messiestobjects]

Made you feel good about yourself for very little effort, right? Do it again! Find the aliens!

[kc]

This is cool.

Now, are you ignoring my "emails", or more importantly, my question, on purpose?

[messiestobjects]

It is cool. Very cool.

I answered your mail.