Congratulations rjohnson!

You earned 15yr badge from project MilkyWay@Home

That’s the email I received today from a distributed computing project I’m a part of. Do you remember the seti@home screensaver? It was never a screensaver but the output of a fourier transform of the signal data visualized. Everyone assumed it was a screensaver but it was actually the seti@home application making its data visual. milkyway@home is a similar type of project but instead of attempting to decipher the infinite (literally) number of radio signals in the universe to see if interstellar life might exist, it audits the cosmos and augments data collected by scientists from around the world as well as large telescopes on the ground and in space by famous telescopes the likes of James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble telescope, and the Vera Rubin Observatory. Specifically MilkyWay@Home deals with the data delivered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data collected by the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico.

Milkyway@Home uses the BOINC platform to harness volunteered computing resources, creating a highly accurate three dimensional model of the Milky Way galaxy using data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This project enables research in both astroinformatics and computer science. – From mikyway@home website.

BOINC is a piece of software which runs on all popular operating systems, even some that are not so popular. It acts as sort of clearing house to attach to science projects from around the world. It’s completely free and what it does is take a little bit of the resources of your computer (or a lot if configured) and donates the computing time to various science projects from around the world including Rosetta@home (protein structure prediction), Einstein@Home (gravitational wave detection), World Community Grid (public health and clean energy research), MilkyWay@home (mapping the galaxy), LHC@home (simulating particle collisions at CERN) and more. BOINC itself is non-technical and includes the list of projects you can attach to. You can attach to 1 project, multiple projects, or all the projects however I would just pick a few which pique your interest so you can focus your free computing cycles on projects that are meaningful to you and give worthy time to the projects.

What they offer in return for the computing power you’re donating is not much, as it’s a volunteer project through and through. All the projects have milestones in the form of certificates. I don’t recall exactly what all the certificates are but as an example, you might get a certificate for signing up, then you might get another after you’ve donated the time to process 1000 “blocks” of data and like the message above, you might get a certificate for having donated 15 years of computing time. I actually have a couple of Linux Ubuntu server which crunch projects 24×7. The servers themselves actually support my business but there is plenty of computing cycles to donate to the various projects I’ve attached to.

The seti@home project unfortunately is no longer running. They stopped distributing new computing units in March of 2020 because they had collected so much data it was time to start analyzing it. Additionally the SETI institute was founded and I think a lot of the work now is being done out their headquarters. Jill Tarter, who was closely associated with the seti@home project was the real life person the character Dr. Ellie Arroway was based on in the movie Contact, which was written by Carl Sagan. So there is some association with heavyweights in both the science and media worlds though no real association with the BOINC project.

If volunteer science projects is something that appeals to you, you can start by going to the BOINC site and downloading the client software. That site is boinc.berkely.edu. Once you’ve downloaded and installed the software you can pick science projects and attach to them. The BOINC software makes it pretty self explanatory but I will admit it’s not the most intuitive piece of software but reading the short installation and usage section on the BOINC website will have you up and donating you free computing cycles in minutes.