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Are You Plugged In to the Zooniverse?

 

For those of you who may be sadly unaware, the Zooniverse is a collection of seriously awe-inspiring citizen science projects that one can participate in entirely online.  I signed up for the first Zooniverse project, Galaxy Zoo, in 2009.  In Galaxy Zoo, you're presented with an image of a space object.  If the object in question is a galaxy, you answer a few questions about the galaxy's traits, submit your classification, and then move on to the next image.  The first several images I was presented were pretty uninspiring - nondescript balls of hazy light in a field of tiny orbs; but then I came across this, my first spiral galaxy:

 

... and it hit me.  It wasn't the most amazing astronomical image I had ever seen, by far, but only a handful of people had ever seen this distant sight, and I was one of them.  I was reaching through time and space to gaze on an unknown galaxy.  As I progressed, I saw galaxies merging together, stretched and deformed by the force of their slow collision; I saw more spiral galaxies, their arms reaching through the vastness of space; I saw images so cluttered with galaxies I had difficulty determining which one to classify, and images of solitary galaxies which seemed to inhabit their own lonely corner of the universe.  I've never looked at completing these classifications as a task, it's always been a privilege.

 

 

The main purpose of this post, before I drift too far afield, is to mention that the Zooniverse has added a new citizen science project to their already fascinating list - Whale FM.  By grouping whale calls according to similarity, you can help scientists understand what all those whales are busy talking about.  Personally, I'm hoping the project reveals that the whale songs captured on those new-age "healing" CDs consist of curse-filled whale rants about human stupidity.  A girl can dream, can't she?

The secondary purpose of this post is to encourage you to get involved!  Citizen science is an incredible opportunity for regular blokes to join forces with scientists and accomplish amazing things, and Zooniverse projects are a great way to get your feet wet because all of the project "work" is done online and you don't need any special skills to participate.  All you have to do is sign up, choose a project, go through a brief tutorial so you know what you're doing, and then DO SCIENCE.  Here's a quick run down of Zooniverse projects currently available:

Ancient Lives: Help scientists transcribe and measure Greek papyri from the Oxryhnchus volumes.

Galaxy Zoo - Classification:  Help classify galaxies featured in pictures taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

Galaxy Zoo - Mergers:  Help scientists understand cosmic mergers by matching targeted mergers with simulations.

Galaxy Zoo - Supernovae:  Help scientists catch exploding stars.

Moon Zoo:  Help scientists explore the moon's surface by identifying common features.

New Horizons - Ice Hunters:  Help find Kuiper Belt Objects for the New Horizons space probe to visit.

Old Weather:  Help contribute to climate model projections by transcribing Royal Navy weather observations during WWI.

Planet Hunters:  Use lightcurve changes from the Kepler spacecraft to find new planets.

Solar Stormwatch:  Help spot solar explosions and track them through space to Earth.

The Milky Way Project:   Helps scientists learn how our galaxy changes with time by drawing circles in infrared images.

 

The project tasks are simple to perform, the instructions are fairly clear, and because each of the tasks you complete are also completed by a number of other citizen scientists you don't have to worry about accidentally submitting rotten data.  Also, the projects are fucking cool.

Do it for SCIENCE!