One of the things I found out about years ago that too many people have not heard of today is how you can use your computer’s idle CPU time to advance science. It all started when the SETI (Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence) and the University of California at Berkley started up SETI@home deployed on a large scale the concept of distributed computing. The concept is simple basically computer tasks are broken up into thousands and thousands of small tasks that can be distributed to thousands and thousands of personal computers. The result of using so many computers is creating a super computer where scientists can crunch huge amounts of data in relatively shorts amounts of time.

Now there dozens of projects that use distributed computing and a simple to use program called BOINC (Berkley created this software as well) is used to organize and run these different projects.  These projects range from creating an accurate three dimensional model of our Milky Way galaxy (MilkyWay@home) to predicting climate change (climateprediction.net).  Of course many of my personal favorite projects have to do with chemisty, biochemistry and particle physics.  The program BOINC is very easy to use and it’s simple to attach yourself to many interesting projects.  It requires fewer computer resources than you might think and I barely notice it is running.  Currently there are Active: 328,838 volunteers, 582,721 computers and you can download the program BOINC here.

Many projects have interesting 3D animated graphics you can view when the project is running and a few even have screen savers.  A few projects I am attached to now are as follows:

SETI@Home or what I like to call “is their anybody out there” project.   The website describes the project in a short message below.

SETI@home is a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can participate by running a free program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data.

Following is a screen shot of it runing one my computer and a short video of the screen saver.

Rosetta@home information from their website.

Rosetta@home 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. By running the Rosetta program on your computer while you don’t need it you will help us speed up and extend our research in ways we couldn’t possibly attempt without your help. You will also be helping our efforts at designing new proteins to fight diseases such as HIV, Malaria, Cancer, and Alzheimer’s.  (the project has a nice screen saver as well)

Following is a good video describing the Rosetta project from YouTube.

Below is a screen shot of the program calculating the tertiary protien structures.

Einstein@home is another great project that objective is to detect the presence of gravitational waves in our galaxy that were predicted by Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity.   Description of the project is listed below from the website.

According to Albert Einstein, we live in a universe full of gravitational waves. He suggested that the movements of heavy objects, such as black holes and dense stars, create waves that change space and time. We have a chance to detect these waves, but we need your help to do it!

Einstein@Home uses computer time donated by computer owners all over the world to process data from gravitational wave detectors. Participants in Einstein@Home download software to their computers, which process gravitational wave data when not being used for other computer applications, like word processors or games. Einstein@Home doesn’t affect the performance of computers and greatly speeds up this exciting research.

Following is a video of the interesting screen saver that comes with the project.

Climateprediction.net is one of the most interesting projects out there which includes about 100,000 simulation scenarios.  A short description of the project is contained below:

Climateprediction.net is a distributed computing project to produce predictions of the Earth’s climate up to 2080 and to test the accuracy of climate models. To do this, we need people around the world to give us time on their computers – time when they have their computers switched on, but are not using them to their full capacity.

The project has great interactive graphics capabilities and a screen saver that shows the resulting temperatures, pressures, cloud cover, rain & snow that the many models suggest.   Following is a short YouTube video showing the screen saver.

Following is a short documentary about the climatprediction.net project that was hosed by Sir. David Attenborough and was shown on BBC TV.

Below is are two screen shot from the project from results calculated on my computer showing predicted temperate changes and changes in rain and snow fall, respectively.

QMC@HOME Quantum Monte Carlo simulations used in calculating quantum properties for various chemicals.  The following describes the QMC project form the website below.

Quantum Chemistry
- is the science that invents smart approximations to Quantum Theory to predict molecular information with high accuracy. Nevertheless the solving of even approximated quantum chemical equations for real life systems require huge amounts of computing power.

Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC)
- is a very promising method new to Quantum Chemistry. One of the major advantages of QMC is the ability to perform massively parallel calculations, which can be utilized to broaden the horizon of calculable systems by distributing the work over hundreds or even thousands of processors.

Quantum Monte Carlo At Home (QMC@HOME)
- is a project designed to further develop the Quantum Monte Carlo method for general use in Quantum Chemistry. With the help of volunteers all over the world we want to aquire the computing power that is needed to test and further develop the opportunities of the promising new approach of Quantum Monte Carlo.

Here is a screen shot of a QMC simulation created by the program.

MilkyWay@home from their website:

The goal of Milkyway@Home is to use the BOINC platform to harness volunteered computing resources in 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.  Following is an image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey project.

There are other great that are not as flash but just as scientifically worthwhile.  Some of the other projects are as follows:

ABC@home a maths project to prove the ABC conjecture.

AQUA@home (Adiabatic QUantum Algorithms) is a research project whose goal is to predict the performance of superconducting adiabatic quantum computers.

Cosmology@home which is a program that’s objective is to model the universe.

Several projects have been completed that have helped scientists and medical researchers understand the spread of maleria using computer models and simulations for predicting population growth and density around the planet.  The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) team is set to start distributed computing projects once they start receive data from the enormous device.

BTW I used one of my favorite fonts in the top graphic named “quark” heh.

The Conference Board Research Group has released the results of their survey regarding job satisfaction and the results show that 45% of Americans are content with their jobs. The lowest rate of job satisfaction since the study began over twenty-two years ago.
The study concludes that workers dissatisfaction with their jobs are for several reasons, and three of them are:
1.) fewer workers consider their jobs interesting
2.) incomes have not kept up with inflation
3.) The soaring cost of health insurance has eaten into workers’ take-home pay.

Americans’ job satisfaction falls to record low

This article provoked thoughts about the corporation that I worked for and retired from 14 years ago.
I’ve calculated the average salary from figures recorded from 2000 – 2009.

Salary Survey for Job: Mechanical Engineer

An engineer that obtained a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering has an average salary of $50,740.00 within the first four years of employment.

Last year, the corporation asked employees to take a 10% cut in wages –

$50,740.00 – $5,074.00 = $45,666.00 annual salary

The corporation also demanded employees take 2 days off per month without pay, two weeks off during the summer without pay and starting January 1st, 2010 – the first week of January off without pay.
That works out to 39 days annually without pay.

Engineering is rarely a 40-hour per week job.
Overtime is common and 55-hour weeks are the norm.
For this discussion, we’ll ignore the fact that due to drastic cutbacks in employees, the remaining engineers are putting in 60+ hour weeks.
To keep it simple, we’ll stick with the 55-hour week.

39 days x 8 hours = 312 hours off without pay annually

Normally, employers calculate the hour paid per year, including paid vacation and holidays at 2,080 hours for a 40-hour week.
Since engineers’ average 55-hour weeks without overtime pay, the annual hours increase to 2,640 hours.

$45,666 /2640 = $17.30 per hour

According to the PayScale site above, the median salary for a Home Depot Retail Assistant Manager is $51,000 annually, and a college degree is not a requirement.

Four years at a university studying calculus, logarithms, science, physics, statistical analysis, and Strength of Materials for a job that pays less and is more stressful than an assistant manager at a hardware store.

Is it any wonder employees are not satisfied?

The Higgs Boson aka the “God Particle” is the talk of the popular science community now because billions and billions of Euros were spend on the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) so that it might be discovered.  But maybe more elusive in a way is the search for the source of dark matter.  Dark matter is the “missing” matter that is theorized to account for 80% of the extra gravitational effects physicists observe in the universe.  One class of particles that is thought to impart these massive gravitational effects are called WIMPS (Weakly Interactive Massive Particles).  The problem is that while these particles are theorized to be relatively large they interact very little with other forms of matter, for example they have no electromagnetic interaction with other particles, that they cannot be detected directly.

Experiments to find these WIMPS all occur deep under ground to minimize the effect of other types of radiation.  WIMPs even they they are relatively large are thought to pass right through the earth without any resistance but physicists have developed exotic detectors to discern the presence of WIMPs.

Physicists think they might have kind of detected these WIMPS in an ongoing experiment.

Experiment Detects Particles of Dark Matter, Maybe

by Ron Cowen

Analyzing results of an experiment in a northern Minnesota mine, physicists report the possible detection of particles of dark matter — the proposed invisible material believed to account for about 80 percent of the mass of the universe. The physicists caution, however, that there’s about a one in four chance that ordinary subatomic particles, rather than dark matter, could account for the signals.

The experiment, called the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search, relies on 30 detectors made of germanium and silicon crystals cooled to just above absolute zero. The detectors record tiny vibrations imparted by a proposed type of dark matter called weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs. WIMPs streaming in from space would very rarely jostle the germanium nuclei, some 800 meters underground in the Soudan mine, generating a tiny amount of heat and slightly altering the charge on the detectors in a characteristic pattern.

About the only thing I promised myself this New Year is that I would spend more time going back to my scientific roots.  So expect at least one article a week that is science related.

One of the scientific discoveries that change our perception of reality the most in the twentieth century was quantum mechanics. Einstein’s theory of special relativity was the first theory of science that was not intuitive but it was still a theory based on deterministic classical physics. When quantum theory was developed by Schrödinger and Heisenberg it was neither intuitive or classic physics. In classic physics it was theorized that if you had the right set of equations any physical phenomenon could be predicted to 100% certainty. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle in quantum physics says exactly the opposite by saying the two physical properties like the position and momentum of a particle cannot be know with certainty. Moreover the Heisenberg principle says at the quantum level just observing the quantum state affects that quantum state. Einstein never accepted quantum mechanics to his own detriment because by not accepting reality he was never able to come up with a unified theory of physics which was his life’s goal.

The Heisenberg principle has implications in every day life when you think about social interactions. When different observers view the same event they come up with a different version of reality for themselves based on their past life experiences and personal physical and mental limitations. This is why most prosecutors would rather have direct DNA or other physical evidence in court rather than witness testimony. Because people view events differently based on their personal biases on a massive scale it can create an environment of mass denial within a group AKA the GOP.

One of the scientific discoveries that change our perception of reality the most in the twentieth century was quantum mechanics. Einstein’s theory of special relativity was the first theory of science that was not intuitive but it was still a theory based on deterministic classical physics. When quantum theory was developed by Schrödinger and Heisenberg it was neither intuitive or classic physics. In classic physics it was theorized that if you had the right set of equations any physical phenomenon could be predicted to 100% certainty. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle in quantum physics says exactly the opposite by saying the two physical properties like the position and momentum of a particle cannot be know with certainty. Moreover the Heisenberg principle says at the quantum level just observing the quantum state affects that quantum state. Einstein never accepted quantum mechanics to his own detriment because by not accepting reality he was never able to come up with a unified theory of physics which was his life’s goal.

The Heisenberg principle has implications in every day life when you think about social interactions. When different observers view the same event they come up with a different version of reality for themselves based on their past life experiences and personal physical and mental limitations. This is why most prosecutors would rather have direct DNA or other physical evidence in court rather than witness testimony. Because people view events differently based on their personal biases on a massive scale it can create an environment of mass denial within a group AKA the GOP.

Since the advent of quantum mechanics and the development of new theories like M-Theory (the theory of everything) scientific thought has expanded into the realm of what we once thought was impossible. QFT (quantum field theory) for example predicts mater can be instantaneously created and destroyed just out of the fabric of space in a vacuum no less. A subset of M-Theory string theory predicts that there are 11 dimensions and the possibility of multiverses existing in the same space. Based on the these relatively new theories any and every physical event is possible but we have to recognize that some things may be possible but the probabilities associated with it happening are so low like 1 in 10¹⁰⁰⁰ that they will never happen in the entire existence of our universe. However if something happens often enough and there is enough time it will occur. For example there would be no atoms or molecules if the very very improbable did not happen. In molecules p-orbitals are binodal meaning the pair of electrons occupy an orbital that is two lobes, but in actuality these orbitals are “attached” by a very low quantum possibility bridge. Because the space is so small in p-orbitals and elections move so fast they pass through this highly improbable bridge so frequently that the binodal orbitals are always filled in a molecule.

M-Theory relies on String Theory and they are closed stings that are free to roam and open strings that are “attached” to branes (folds that we perceive as our physical world). One unique way M-Theory deals with gravity unlike any theory is that it predicts the force of gravity to be a closed vibrating string that can pass within multiple dimensions where some dimensions act on the physical universe in a classic sense and some dimensions are beyond our interaction with the universe. This is why the force of gravity is perceived to be so low in our existence, while other forces like electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force that have been unified by other theories are open strings that are attached to what we perceive as the physical world attributing to their relative strong field strength compared to gravity.

“I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything, and in many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here, and what the question might mean. I might think about a little, but if I can’t figure it out, then I go to something else. But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me.” —The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman (edited by Jeffrey Robbins), 1999

To me in M-Theory there is an implied spirituality to the universe because events occur within and without our everyday perception. Think about it, things like psychics feeling the remnants of past traumatic events or feeling the echoes of people who are no longer with us could actually be their quantum echo in a dimension we cannot fully perceive. I know this may sound far out for some but when you finally accept that in our universe everything is possible even spirituality can have a scientific basis.

No I have not been smoking pot, not that there’s anything wrong with that, and yes let’s get onto tonight’s festivities. In honor of Les Paul’s passing this year I will post a few videos from some of my favorite electric guitarists of all time, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimmy Page and Tom Morello.