Friday, September 10, 2010

Citizen Science

There's a way for you to gaze at the stars and help advance our understanding of the universe. It's called Galaxy Zoo. The great thing is that computers aren't as good at recognizing patterns as people are. This program is very successful and people have identified anomalies and gotten recognition for it. A school teacher in Amsterdam, Hanny van Arkel, identified a blog-shaped object that they believe is the ghost of an "enormously powerful luminous accreting supermassive black hole" in a galaxy near us. The members of the citizen scientists named the anomaly Hanny's Voorwerp , or Hanny's Object. Fantastic!


For an interesting interview between Science Talk Host Steve Mirsky and the guy that runs Galaxy Zoo, Yale astrophysicist Kevin Schawinski, check out the Scientific American podcast below:

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