Scientists have discovered 24 pulsars that are stellar remnants with extreme physical properties. They have used a computer cloud with computing power of 200,000 private PCs to support their discovery.

Benjamin Knispel was the lead author of the study. He is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hannover. He said that their research could have not been a success had they been not provided with the enormous computing power by the Einstein@Home volunteers.

He added that public participation also supported in their discovery of 24 new pulsars in our Milky Way. These had been previously missing. The data from Parkes Multi-beam Pulsar Survey was analyzed by Knispel and his colleagues. The data was gathered between 1997 and 2001.

Remains of explosions of massive stars are called pulsars. A beam of radio waves is emitted by rapidly rotating pulsars along their magnetic field axis. Scientists are able to observe radio wave beam, provided the beam is swept in the direction of earth.

It took mere eight months for the scientists to complete their analysis of the archival Parkes data. Efforts were also being made by the thousands of volunteers from around the world, as they donated idle computer cycles on their home and office PCs to Einstein@Home.