Scientific computing: Sharing is caring

You're currently sitting in front of a high-tech, superpowered computational machine. It's capable of running calculations in a second that would take the human brain hours or even days. What are you using it for? Sure, you write code and play high-end games, but do you really do that all the time? Chances are there are days where all you do is check email, stare blankly at Facebook, and browse /r/cats before getting up to make yourself lunch, leaving your browser open to a picture of a stranger's cat.

The best use of time

Doesn't that feel like a waste? It's like what Google employees complain about: your computer is capable of much more than you're actually telling it to do. It's overqualified for its cat-picture-displaying job. Wouldn't you rather use your laptop to its fullest extent? And maybe help science?

There are tons of projects where you can donate your unused CPU power to help scientists run demanding computations for their research. This is the basis of distributed computing, where computational power is divided between a network of computers; this gives the power of a supercomputer without the monetary or space requirements. Distributed systems are especially useful for scientific computing (also known as computational science), which is centered around constructing mathematical models of scientific problems. Scientific problems that could use your help.

Pictured: helping

So now I've convinced you. You're all set to donate some spare PC power to a worthy scientific cause. Where do you get started? Well, for starters, Wikipedia has a whole list of distributed computing projects, which should give you enough of a jumping-off point. For those of you too lazy to change pages, here are some cool ones:

Electric sheep: alright, this isn't exactly science. But it's pretty cool anyway. While your computer sleeps, it talks to other computers on the Electric Sheep network. Together, your computers share the work of creating complex crazy abstract shapes and fractals.

Cosmology@home: if you want a loftier goal with your computing, the people at Cosmology@home is working to find the model that best fits the Universe. You know. No big deal.

Einstein@home: keeping with the space theme, Einstein@home uses your computer's idle time to find neutron stars -- they've already found over three dozen and are supported by the American Physical Society.