Our group’s population synthesis simulations — the calculations behind our predictions for gravitational wave sources — require far more computing power than any single institution can provide. To bridge that gap, we initiated Universe@Home, a volunteer computing project run from CAMK PAN on the BOINC platform. Anyone with a spare computer can contribute: the BOINC client runs our binary evolution code in the background whenever the machine is idle, returning results to the project server automatically. Since launching in 2015 — as the first BOINC project ever hosted by a Polish scientific institution — Universe@Home has grown to nearly 30,000 participating computers worldwide.
The science running on these volunteer machines covers the full range of our group’s research interests: formation and merger rates of binary black holes and neutron stars, the origin of ultraluminous X-ray sources, and the construction of synthetic black hole population databases for the Milky Way.
If you would like to contribute, you can create a free account and join at https://universeathome.pl