MilkyWay@Home studies the history of our galaxy by analyzing the stars in the Milky Way galaxy’s Galactic Halo. This includes searching for elusive dark matter. This research is done by mapping structures of stars orbiting the Milky Way – many these structures are actually “tidal debris streams,” or dwarf galaxies that are being pulled apart by our Galaxy’s superior gravitational field. The orbits, shapes, and compositions of these dwarf galaxies provide vital clues to the history of our Galaxy, as well as to the distribution of dark matter….

The need for volunteer computing by SETI@Home ended on 31 March 2020.  Since then we have had a number of CPU Cycles sitting around doing nothing.  On 13 April 2020 they were once more gainfully employed by MilkyWay@Home .

SET@Home and MilkyWay@Home use the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC).  In 25 words or less, BOINC is a client/server system that can scale to support a very large client population.  Take a look here to learn more about BOINC.

BOINC uses measurement units called Cobblestones to credit the amount of work done by a client.

We started contributing spare CPU cycles to SETI@Home on 13 March 2003.  At the completion of our participation in SETI@Home on 31 March 2020, we had contributed 13,443,766 Cobblestones.

There are currently two PCs on our network contributing CPU cycles to Milkyway@Home:

• Piggy – a MINT Linux desktop
• Yunzer – a MINT Linux laptop.

Our participation in MilkyWay@Home began on 13 April 2020.  As of 21 June 2024, we have contributed over 19,747,657 Cobblestones to the project.