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Home PCs Help Pinpoint Pulsars
家庭电脑帮助确定脉冲星。
It’s pretty rare to find a scientific study that acknowledges key contributions from individuals who go by names like “IG_the_cheetah” and “Revoluzzer.” But Ig and Rev were big helps in finding previously unknown pulsars in our own Milky Way galaxy—24 of them. The discovery is in the Astrophysical Journal.
很少见到科学研究承认主要贡献来自于IG_the_cheetah和Revoluzzer这些网友。但是这些网友在找到银河中之前未知的24颗脉冲星发挥了很大作用。这个发现发表在《天体物理学》杂志上。
A pulsar is the rapidly rotating ultra-dense remnant of a collapsed massive star. Imagine the mass of the sun, compressed to the diameter of a medium-size city, spinning faster than a DVD.
脉冲星是一种快速转动的超高密度残骸，来自毁灭的大型恒星。想象下太阳压缩成中型城市直径大小的物质，比DVD转得还快。
The new pulsars were found by the distributed computing project Einstein@Home . It uses idle computing time on the PCs of thousands of volunteer users—like Ig and Rev—to scan telescope data for pulsar signals. In this case the data were more than a decade old, but still contained a few hidden gems—such as the pulsars that have now been unearthed, if you will, for astronomers to study in greater detail.
新的脉冲星是由分布各地的“家中的爱因斯坦”计算机项目发现的。使用成千上万个志愿者电脑的闲置计算时间，诸如Ig和Rev的电脑，扫描望远镜数据中的脉冲星信号。这个项目中的数据有十年之久了，但是还是很有未发现的部分，如果你能发现新的脉冲星，就能使天文学家研究其中细节。
You too can lend your spare computer power to the pulsar hunt. Einstein@Home even runs on Android devices. So your smartphone could help make us all smarter.
你也可以将你的空闲电脑力量用于寻找脉冲星。“家中的爱因斯坦”项目甚至能在安卓装置上运行。所以说你的智能手机能让我们更聪明。
—John Matson
