Bored with your SETI online screensaver? Try a climate model!
Via the BBC, a collaboration between the universities of Oxford and Reading, the Met Office, the Open University, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, and Tessella Support Services, resulted in a new ‘distributed’ project. Users over the world are asked to download a program which runs in the background, simulating future weather patterns. Results of each single download are sent back to the organisers.
Currently there’s only a Windows version, but a Linux version is on its way. You need a faster than 800MHz computer, though:
“The software will run on slower machines but to make progress towards a public release we need faster machines for testing: A 1.4 GHz machine will take about 6 weeks if it is left running all the time. An 800MHz machine will take almost take twice as long. A 2.8GHz machine under 4 weeks.”