BitBOINC

🌠 Two new research projects: Nostos and Phygas 💫

bitboinc now runs two new astronomy projects alongside Kampylos and the puzzle hunt. Both use Gaia's measurements of 33 million stars and run the clock backwards through the Milky Way, to find where things came from.

🌠 Nostos: where did interstellar objects come from?
'Oumuamua and Borisov are the first two objects we have seen arrive from another star's planetary system. Nostos traces each of them back 100 million years against every one of the 33 million stars, to find the stars they passed closely and slowly: candidates for their home systems. 'Oumuamua is running now, Borisov comes next.
Nostos page · Full description

💫 Phygas: where were runaway stars and pulsars born?
Some stars are thrown out of their birth cluster, by a supernova in a binary or by a close encounter, and neutron stars leave with a kick of hundreds of km/s. Phygas traces every Gaia star with a known 3D motion and every pulsar with a measured motion back against 4,087 young star clusters, to find which cluster they left, when, and how fast. Pulsar tasks go out first, then the stars.
Phygas page · Full description

How to join
Both are CPU applications for Windows, Linux, macOS and Android. If you haven't changed your project preferences, you'll get them automatically. Otherwise, enable Nostos and Phygas under Project preferences. Both have their own badges.

All results, raw data included, will be published openly. Thanks for computing with us!

---