Einstein@Home is a distributed computing project running on the BOINC framework. It is designed to search data collected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (LIGO) in the United States and the GEO 600 gravitational wave observatory in Germany for gravitational signals from extremely dense, rapidly rotating stars generally called compact stars. These include pulsars. According to the theory of general relativity, such stars should "drag" spacetime around them as they rotate, which should cause detectable gravitational radiation to be emitted.
This project has been launched as part of the World Year of Physics in 2005 as an attempt to leverage the power of volunteer-driven distributed computing in solving the computationally intensive problem of analyzing a large volume of data. Such an approach was pioneered by the SETI@home project designed to look for signs of extra-terrestrial life by analyzing radio wave data.
Applications for participating in the Einstein@Home project by donating free processor time are being solicited from the public as of January 2005.
External links