 While your computer is running idle, it could be finding new pulsars and black holes in deep space. Image caption The pulsar was discovered in data collected by the Arecibo Observatory 
 
 "No matter what else we find out about it, this pulsar is bound to be extremely interesting for understanding the basic physics of neutron stars and how they form." "The way that we found the pulsar using distributed computing with volunteers is a new paradigm that we're going to make better use of in astronomy as time goes on," said astronomer Jim Cordes of Cornell University. But this companion has since exploded; this has kicked the surviving object free. The newly discovered radio pulsar, given the designation PSR J2007+2722, is a fast-spinning neutron star which can be formed in certain types of supernovae, or stellar explosions. Pulsars are birthed when stars five to 10 times as massive as our sun explode into a supernova and then collapse into stars composed almost entirely of neutrons. The latest find was made by searching through radio astronomy data collected the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, US. The program has been used to create 70 different distributed computing projects (almost every one in existence except Folding@Home), and you can decide what fraction of your spare computing power you want to dedicate to each of the 70 projects.
– Three regular people who volunteered to put their idle home computers to work crunching scientific data in off-hours have been credited with making a major discovery in deep space. The "citizen scientists"—two in Iowa and one in Germany—downloaded and processed the data that found a disrupted binary pulsar 17,000 light years away, the BBC reports. The object is a fast-spinning neutron star that sucked matter from an exploding companion star. Around 250,000 volunteers have donated computer time to the Einstein@Home project—altogether, computing power equal to 25% of the capacity of the world's largest supercomputer—and astronomers expect their combined computing power to yield many more discoveries. "The way that we found the pulsar using distributed computing with volunteers is a new paradigm that we’re going to make better use of in astronomy as time goes on,” a Cornell University astronomers tells Wired. “This really has legs.”