Albert Einstein (c) Camera Press, K. of Ottawa

In 1916 Albert Einstein postulated that our universe is pulsing with gravitational waves created by the gyrations of black holes, neutron stars and other cosmic colossi. Nearly a century later, these waves' existence has yet to be confirmed.

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, LIGO, will detect the ripples in space-time using controlled laser light to precisely measure the time it takes light to travel between suspended mirrors.

In celebration of the World Year of Physics 2005 honoring this great scientist, and with the support of the American Physical Society and international organizations, LIGO launched Einstein@home, modeled after SETI@home, to attract CPU power to their data-intensive search.

Volunteers all over the world have been downloading Einstein@home and collectively processing about one terabyte per day of LIGO's data on their home computers. Think of 50,000 trees made into paper and printed -- every day -- for over two years so far!

When Einstein@HOME reached one million BOINC credits a day, the team started running opportunistically on Open Science Grid resources, which has led to significantly increased throughput.

Einstein@home is currently searching for a gravitational signature from spinning neutron stars. Keep up with the progress, and welcome Einstein into your home at http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/ .