XPulsar@home - schools help scientists

In spring 1999, the Department for Theoretical Astrophysics of Tubingen University together with the Ministries of Science and of Education, Baden-Wurttemberg, started a global computing project called XPulsar@home. Its aim was to compute a large number of X-Ray Pulsar models with a Monte-Carlo-Simulation code. The simulation was implemented as a Java applet, later also as a Java application, running on private or school PCs of volunteer participants. The server structure consisted of one main server and several slave servers. The whole system, except for the Java virtual machines, was built from free software components. During the first four months, about 75 years of computation time was obtained, with several hundred clients. The major motivation to contribute was a competition among the high schools in Baden-Wurttemberg. The second objective of the competition was to make physics and astronomy more interesting and exciting for students through participation in a research project.