Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

MilkyWay@home is a distributed computing project and joint effort between the departments of Computer Science and Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The project uses the BOINC platform to harness volunteered computing resources to create highly accurate three dimensional models of the Milky Way galaxy using... data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. It serves researchers in astroinformatics and computer science, focusing on the study of the Galactic Halo, the search for dark matter, and the investigation of optimization methods resilient to the nature of Internet computing. The project delivers value through a volunteer-driven model that generates simulations of dwarf galaxies and tidal debris streams to understand galactic formation.Read More