What is MilkyWay@home?
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.
In computer science, the project is investigating different optimization methods which are resilient to the fault-prone, heterogeneous and asynchronous nature of Internet computing; such as evolutionary and genetic algorithms, as well as asynchronous newton methods. While in astroinformatics, Milkyway@Home is generating highly accurate three dimensional models of the Sagittarius stream, which provides knowledge about how the Milky Way galaxy was formed and how tidal tails are created when galaxies merge.
Milkyway@Home is a joint effort between Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's departments of Computer Science and Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy. Feel free to contact us via our forums, or email astro[at]cs.lists.rpi[dot]edu.
Read more on our Science Page, or check out our YouTube Channel!
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People
Milkyway@Home is currently run by:- Travis Desell, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, University of North Dakota
- Heidi Newberg, Professor of Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy
- Malik Magdon-Ismail, Professor of Computer Science
- Carlos Varela, Associate Professor of Computer Science
- Boleslaw Szymanski, Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor of Computer Science
- Jake Weiss, Postdoctoral Researcher in Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy
- Eric Mendelsohn, Graduate Research Assistant in Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy
- Blurf, Volunteer Forum Moderator
- Siddhartha Shelton, PhD Physics
- Matthew Newby, Adjunct Faculty in Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy
- Jeffery Thompson, Graduate Research Assistant in Physics, Apllied Physics, and Astronomy
- Matt Arsenault, Graduate Research Assistant in Physics
- Benjamin Willet, Postdoctoral Researcher in Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy
- Nathan Cole, Graduate Research Assistant in Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy
- Maia Marchetti, Undergraduate Research Assistant in Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy
- Adam Susser, Undergraduate Research Assistant in Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy
- Jake Bauer, Undergraduate Research Assistant in Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy
- Steve Ulins, Undergraduate Research Assistant in Physics
- Colin Rice, Undergraduate Research Assistant in Physics
- Shane Reilly, Undergraduate Research Assistant in Computer Science
- Joe Doran, Undergraduate Research Assistant in Computer Science
- Brian Chitester, Undergraduate Research Assistant in Computer Science
- Dave Przybylo, Undergraduate Research Assistant in Computer Science
- John Vickers, Undergraduate Research Assistant in Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy
- Anthony Waters, Graduate Research Assistant in Computer Science
- Clayton Rayment, Graduate Research Assistant in Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy
Funding
Milkway@home is funded through a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendtions expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.
Individual grants are listed on the information page.
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News
Leaving MilkyWay@home
Hey Everyone,
I want to thank you all for your support and encouragement over the last 7 or so years that I have been a developer and scientist on this project. Unfortunately, it has come time for me to move on to the next phase in my life and career. Tuesday, April 30th will be my last day working in an official capacity on the MilkyWay@home project and for RPI.
Over the last several months, I have been doing my best to document and pass my knowledge down to the current MilkyWay@home scientists and developers, so I am confident you all will be in good hands.
I wish you all the best, and thank you all again.
Best,
Jake
25 Apr 2019, 18:42:51 UTC
· Discuss
New runs of MilkyWay Nbody out
Hello all,
I just wanted to let you know that new runs for the newest version of the MilkyWay@home Nbody program have just been released. The names of these new runs are:
-de_nbody_04_23_2019_v176_40k__data__1
-de_nbody_04_23_2019_v176_40k__data__2
-de_nbody_04_23_2019_v176_40k__data__3
I apologize for any inconveniences over the last few days. If you have any issues with these runs, please let me know on this thread and I will try to sort them out as quickly as I can.
Just so you know, some of the changes we made for this nbody version take runs that would've taken extremely long times to compute and return success immediately. As such, credit for nbody may be a little strange until the server recognizes the new average runtime. Also note that there is no longer support for multi-threaded.
Again, thank you all for your continued support.
-Eric Mendelsohn
23 Apr 2019, 21:07:28 UTC
· Discuss
New version of MilkyWay Nbody
Hello all,
We have just released a new version of the MilkyWay@home Nbody application. We have not put up new runs for this yet. We will be putting up new runs next week or the following week. Thank you for your support!
-Eric Mendelsohn
23 Apr 2019, 15:16:54 UTC
· Discuss
New Separation Runs
Hey everyone,
There was a problem with the previous separation runs that was causing some command lines to overflow. I have changed the bundle size of the new runs, so that shouldn't be a problem anymore. The previous runs have been taken down.
The names of the new runs are:
de_modfit_80_bundle4_4s_south4s_0
de_modfit_81_bundle4_4s_south4s_0
de_modfit_82_bundle4_4s_south4s_0
de_modfit_83_bundle4_4s_south4s_0
de_modfit_84_bundle4_4s_south4s_0
de_modfit_85_bundle4_4s_south4s_0
de_modfit_86_bundle4_4s_south4s_0
These new workunits will crunch a little faster than the previous versions, and credits are assigned accordingly.
Thank you all for your patience during this transition period!
Tom
16 Apr 2019, 17:58:10 UTC
· Discuss
New Separation Runs
Hey all,
I just put up new separation runs on the server. The names of these runs are:
de_modfit_80_bundle5_4s_south4s_0
de_modfit_81_bundle5_4s_south4s_0
de_modfit_82_bundle5_4s_south4s_0
de_modfit_83_bundle5_4s_south4s_0
de_modfit_84_bundle5_4s_south4s_0
de_modfit_85_bundle5_4s_south4s_0
de_modfit_86_bundle5_4s_south4s_0
If you have any issues with these specific runs, please post about them here. I will do my best to help you in any way I can.
Thank you for your continued support,
Tom
12 Apr 2019, 17:16:12 UTC
· Discuss
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