More @Homes

Einstein@Home, a grid project searching for the gravitational waves predicted by Einstein nearly a century ago, was launched on my birthday (Feb 19). 50,000 people have downloaded Einstein@Home and, according to NewScientist.com, more than 1,000 people a day are still joining.

PlanetQuest is another grid project based on BOINC, the same open-source engine as SETI@Home. Clients with the PlanetQuest client installed will process packages of data collected from telescopes around the world with the ultimate goal of finding new planets. One cool thing about PlanetQuest is they will let you name planets found through computation performed on your computer. How cool would it be to send a probe to Planet Roberta? ;-)