Terry's Involvement in Citizen Science
The first activity is using idle time on personal computers to run scientific analysis tasks downloaded from a control program such as BOINC (boinc.berkeley.edu).
The Citizen Scientist can choose from a large number of projects to contribute their unused CPU and GPU-cycles. There is a sophisticated work management and contribution measurement system with BOINC.
Seven of the computers in Terry's home are supporting to Citizen Science 24/7/365, three on a full time basis and four on a shared basis.
These seven computers have a total of 54 CPU Cores, (all processors are multi-core, several with eight cores) and extremely powerful graphics boards with their own GPUs which are also used for processing data.
Terry is currently working with five BOINC-supported projects:
Einstein@Home is a astrophysics project that is looking for gravity waves (predicted by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity) generated by spinning neutron stars (also called pulsars) using data from the LIGO gravitational-wave detectors, the Arecibo radio telescope, and the Fermi gamma-ray satellite.
MilkyWay@Home studies the history of our galaxy by analyzing the stars in the Milky Way galaxy's Galactic Halo. This includes searching for elusive dark matter. This research is done by mapping structures of stars orbiting the Milky Way - many these structures are actually "tidal debris streams," or dwarf galaxies that are being pulled apart by our Galaxy's superior gravitational field. The orbits, shapes, and compositions of these dwarf galaxies provide vital clues to the history of our Galaxy, as well as to the distribution of dark matter.
Moo! Wrapper brings together BOINC volunteer computing network resources and the Distributed.net projects.
NumberFields@home searches for fields with special properties. The primary application of this research is in the realm of algebraic number theory. Number theorists can mine the data for interesting patterns to help them formulate conjectures about number fields. Ultimately, this research will lead to a deeper understanding of the properties of numbers, the basic building blocks of all mathematics. Another application of number fields is in cryptography, where they are used in sophisticated factoring algorithms and as the basis for new cryptosystems. There are also distant applications to mathematical physics, including quantum mechanics and string theory.
PrimeGrid@home's primary goal is to advance mathematics by enabling everyday computer users to contribute their system's processing power towards prime finding. By simply downloading and installing BOINC and attaching to the PrimeGrid project, participants can choose from a variety of prime forms to search. With a little patience, you may find a large or even record breaking prime and enter into Chris Caldwell's The Largest Known Primes Database with a multi-million digit prime!
As of 1 August 2024, Terry's three full-time and four part-time BOINC-linked CPU-complexes rank number 1,193 in completed work units out of 4,035,815 active BOINC-linked CPU-complexes in the world. This represents more work units that 99.97041% of the BOINC-linked CPU-complexes in the world. Terry has contributed more work units than 99.94939% of the BOINC users in the US.
The second activity is classifying the shape of galaxies (round, spiral, other) by visual interpretation for Galaxy Zoo (www.galaxyzoo.org). Determination of the shape of deep sky objects observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Hubble Space Telescope has proved to difficult for computers but relatively easy for the human mind.