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

With Ongoing Support from:

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

With previous support from:

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.

User of the Day

Jeff17

I work in information technology. My primary interest is in the mathematical projects, but I have recently picked up an interest in some of the biology...

News

Introducing Myself
Hey everyone,
My name is Dylan DeNicola, and I recently joined the MilkyWay@home project as a Project Developer and Project Tester, so I wanted to introduce myself. I'm currently an undergraduate sophomore at RPI, and I'm working towards a computer science major. I plan on working on the development of the BOINC software for the project, and for now, I will be working on updating the server to the latest version of BOINC, getting our GitHub repos up to date, and doing general bug fixes. It's a pleasure meeting all of you, and I look forward to contributing to this project!

Thanks,
Dylan
19 Jan 2022, 21:47:31 UTC · Discuss

Server Outages
Hi Everyone,

I'll be working for the rest of the night to try to resolve the large number of workunits waiting for validation. This will involve the server going up and down for maintenance, and certain processes may be turned off for periods of time tonight. I'm hoping that things are resolved tonight, but it is definitely possible that things may not be resolved by tomorrow.

Thanks for you patience and support!
13 Dec 2021, 21:56:46 UTC · Discuss

Planned Deprecation of TLS 1.0/1.1
To Sum Up: Older machines/BOINC clients may encounter issues after 12/17/2021. In order to prevent this, update your BOINC client to at least ~~7.210~~ 7.2.10 by then, as well as your OpenSSL and curl libraries if necessary.

Hey Everyone,

We recently renewed the cert for the server, and we realized that the server is still supporting TLS 1.0/1.1. These services are out of date and are security hazards. We are going to end support for these services as of Friday, December 17, 2021.

What does this mean for you as a user?

Older clients may still be using old versions of SSL that need TLS 1.0 or 1.1. Once we stop supporting these services, these older clients may encounter issues when trying to communicate and/or get work from the MilkyWay@home server. In order to prevent this, you should update to at least the ~~7.210~~ 7.2.10 BOINC client.

Additionally, some libraries rely on old versions of TLS. The most common of these are old versions of OpenSSL and curl. If you are running old versions of these libraries, it may be time to update them. Other libraries might also cause issues, so we will keep track of any problems that people run into here.

Overall these issues are relatively easy to fix and should only impact older systems, especially those that have not updated their libraries or BIONC clients in a long time.

Best,
Tom
10 Dec 2021, 15:55:22 UTC · Discuss

News General
Hey Everyone,

I think that it would be useful to have a general thread in News for random problems or notices that don't relate to any other thread, or don't require their own thread. Recently we've been using the Validator Outage thread for this, but it's better to have a designated place for it.

Feel free to post comments/concerns/general project status-related thoughts on this thread.

Best,
Tom
9 Dec 2021, 15:05:00 UTC · Discuss

Scheduled Outage 11/16/21 3PM EDT
Hey Everyone,

I'm going to take down the server at 3PM EDT tomorrow. The outage should only be a couple hours at most.

Tom
15 Nov 2021, 17:57:09 UTC · Discuss

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