By Nick Heath, 18 May 2009 12:43
The hunt for alien planets is not just taking place at the far reaches of our galaxy but within high performance computing (HPC) centres at universities across the UK.
At the University of Leicester, the Spectrum HPC is one of the main supercomputers churning through millions of observations from robotic wide angle telescopes - as part of the UK SuperWASP project - in the hope of a telltale glimpse of a distant planet.
Spectrum has 400 CPU cores and relies on a combination of 30TB drives and a large tape library.
By analysing data from telescopes trained on one piece of sky for a long period of time the supercomputer can spot the regular dimming as a planet passes in front of its sun. Pictured is the same motion with the planet Mercury passing in front of the sun in our solar system.
The project is scouring images of 28 million stars and to date has found 25 exoplanets - planets outside of our solar system. The exoplanets that have been discovered are far larger than earth but the next generation of telescopes should be able to detect smaller, more earth-like bodies.
Dr Chris Rudge, facility manager for the UK Astrophysics Fluids Facility at Leicester University, said: "The UK is at the forefront of exoplanet research, we are finding these things frequently and cheaply."
The supercomputer is working its way through the 6.7 million images that have been collected since the project began in 2004.
A lot of work also goes into correcting for potential red herrings in the images such as planes or the International Space Station going overhead.
Photo credit: edhiker, via Flickr under the following Creative Commons licence
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