Today we are releasing a new app (in beta for the moment) to help analyze Planck data. Read more about it in the comments. Start crunching this app now for a chance to receive thanks in the acknowledgements of our forthcoming paper!

Part of the promise of all the updates, Virtualbox, the boinc2docker jobs, etc... was to make it easier for us to deploy apps, so we could go from "cool science idea" to "functioning Cosmology@Home app" quickly and make the results that you guys are calculating as relevant as possible for science going on at this very moment. Today this starts to become reality as we are releasing a new app called "planck_param_sim". We will give more details in a post when it comes out of beta (hopefully very soon). For now though a brief summary,

• The science: The goal of C@H is "to find the model of the universe which best agrees with cosmological data." Right now in cosmology we have a standard model, which we call LCDM, that seems to explain all of our data fairly well. The CAMB jobs you are running have been scanning through the parameters of this model. These new jobs are going to help test the consistency of the model itself. To do so, each job simulates a universe, simulates what observing this universe with the Planck satellite would look like, and simulates an analysis of this (simulated) data (can you tell we love simulations...). This lets us build up a distribution of what results look like when we analyze the data in certain different ways, which we can compare to how our actual (non-simulated) Planck results looks like. If they look pretty much the same, LCDM passes another precision test. If they don't it means we've found something new and interesting, the most exciting of which is that we've seen hints of new physics!
  
  
• Job specs: its impossible to determine the exact length of any particular job ahead of time. We've set the progress bar so that most jobs will finish somewhere between when it is at 20% and 90%. We're also giving fixed credit per job, based on the average job length. This is 50 credits per job.
  
  
• We will be using these results directly in a forthcoming paper from the Planck collaboration. To give you extra incentive to run these jobs we'll give thanks in the acknowledgments of the paper to the top 3 users and the top team according to credits gained on this app (we'll give a two week warning before picking the winners). Credits gained during the beta will count, so go ahead and get started now!
  

Thanks, and don't hesitate to give us any feedback below!

Thanks, and don't hesitate to give us any feedback below!

First task - validate error http://www.cosmologyathome.org/result.php?resultid=36244200

Could you mention the approximate amount of memory this new app requires, relative to the previous app, so users who have had to set No new tasks due to the memory demands of the previous app can decide whether to enable ONLY the new app?

How can I get the new Jobs? It only gives me boinc2docker jobs when I update.

• Have a 64bit OS
  
• Ensure VM extensions are enabled (and possibly check that you're not affected by this bug.)
  
• Go to your C@H preferences and make sure that "Run test applications" is checked and that "planck_param_sim" is checked under "Run only the selected applications"
  

Hi and thanks for the reply. Got some jobs now and wanted to run them but after a minute or so it just ends with a computation error. You need any info for troubleshooting? http://www.cosmologyathome.org/result.php?resultid=36258867

Ah, for that error there's some discussion in this thread this thread. Downgrading to Virtualbox 4.X might be a solution. Otherwise we actually also just made an update aimed at giving us better logs to figuring out what this error is, so I'll be curious to look at yours from this job.

All tasks fail on my Linux box with "process exited with code 1"

This suggests some library problem I think. I'll try on OSX later.

S.

Validate errors still are happening

Well, looks like I don't get the new app working on one of my hosts - an AMD Phenom II X6 1045 with Windows Vista.
Installed is BOINC 7.6.22 and VirtualBox 5.0.14 now. I tried different VB-versions from 4.3.20 up to the one now, but it doesn't look as if it can work correctly - CPU is seemingly using only one core when I look into the task manager and the percentage won't go over 0,1%, already running over an hour now.

I cannot test it on my other machine (AMD FX 8320 with Win 7) currently, BOINC manager says there are no tasks available, yet the server status says something else... ?
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