harbingers_kiss
12-07-2007, 10:17 AM
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070709/full/070709-7.html
Astronomers enlist Internet users to unravel mysteries of galactic birth.
Michael Hopkin
An experiment launching today is offering the chance to help unravel the mysteries of galaxy formation. All you need is a computer and a pair of eyes.
The project, called Galaxy Zoo, is recruiting volunteers to help with the largest galaxy census ever carried out. Around a million galaxies will be scrutinized by keen pairs of eyes to categorize them into different types.
The results will help to answer questions about how galaxies form and may reveal galactic patterns spanning the entire Universe.
Cooperative brains
The idea of scientists analysing data on other people's computers is not new. There are a host of such 'distributed computing' experiments, seeking everything from alien life to new cancer drugs.
But these projects use the spare time of volunteers' computers. Galaxy Zoo is different: it uses volunteers' brains.
Galaxy Zoo's website hosts around a million images captured by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a project to map around a quarter of the sky. The team, based at the University of Oxford, UK, is aiming to assign each image to one of two main types of galaxy: spiral, like our own Milky Way, or elliptical.
That involves recognizing the presence or absence of the swirling arms that characterize spiral galaxies, and judging whether they are spinning clockwise or anti-clockwise. "The human brain is actually much better than a computer at these pattern-recognition tasks," says team member Kevin Schawinski.
Opening the project to amateurs saves the astronomers the mind-numbing job of studying all the galaxies themselves, and it means that the project could be completed in months rather than years.
Spotting patterns
Taking part involves a brief online tutorial explaining the different galactic types, followed by a short test to prove that you know what you're doing. After that you're off, looking at galaxies that have probably never been seen before.
more.................. http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070709/full/070709-7.html
Astronomers enlist Internet users to unravel mysteries of galactic birth.
Michael Hopkin
An experiment launching today is offering the chance to help unravel the mysteries of galaxy formation. All you need is a computer and a pair of eyes.
The project, called Galaxy Zoo, is recruiting volunteers to help with the largest galaxy census ever carried out. Around a million galaxies will be scrutinized by keen pairs of eyes to categorize them into different types.
The results will help to answer questions about how galaxies form and may reveal galactic patterns spanning the entire Universe.
Cooperative brains
The idea of scientists analysing data on other people's computers is not new. There are a host of such 'distributed computing' experiments, seeking everything from alien life to new cancer drugs.
But these projects use the spare time of volunteers' computers. Galaxy Zoo is different: it uses volunteers' brains.
Galaxy Zoo's website hosts around a million images captured by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a project to map around a quarter of the sky. The team, based at the University of Oxford, UK, is aiming to assign each image to one of two main types of galaxy: spiral, like our own Milky Way, or elliptical.
That involves recognizing the presence or absence of the swirling arms that characterize spiral galaxies, and judging whether they are spinning clockwise or anti-clockwise. "The human brain is actually much better than a computer at these pattern-recognition tasks," says team member Kevin Schawinski.
Opening the project to amateurs saves the astronomers the mind-numbing job of studying all the galaxies themselves, and it means that the project could be completed in months rather than years.
Spotting patterns
Taking part involves a brief online tutorial explaining the different galactic types, followed by a short test to prove that you know what you're doing. After that you're off, looking at galaxies that have probably never been seen before.
more.................. http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070709/full/070709-7.html