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Identify Galaxies Using Spare Wetware Cycles

Posted by kdawson on Sat Jul 14, 2007 04:47 PM
from the blinded-by-science dept.
Space Science
hazem invites us to have fun, learn about galaxies, and actually help astronomers by looking at pictures of galaxies and identifying the type. Warning: it's more addictive than Tetris. From the site: "GalaxyZoo... harnesses the power of the internet — and your brain — to classify a million galaxies. By taking part, you'll not only be contributing to scientific research, but you'll view parts of the Universe that literally no-one has ever seen before and get a sense of the glorious diversity of galaxies that pepper the sky. Why do we need you? The simple answer is that the human brain is much better at recognizing patterns than a computer can ever be. Any computer program we write to sort our galaxies into categories would do a reasonable job, but it would also inevitably throw out the unusual, the weird and the wonderful. To rescue these interesting systems which have a story to tell, we need you."
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] Technology: Citizen Science and Grid Computing 69 comments
japonicus writes "The Economist has an article summarizing the current state of distributed computing (think SETI@home and its ilk), which suggests that distributed-human projects are going to be the next big thing. (We discussed one such project, the Galaxy Zoo, a few months back.) The distributed-computing platform BOINC is about to expand to human processing. Distributed proofreaders have been a longstanding success (yet inexplicably failed to get even a mention in the article); but there are a lot of other projects waiting in the wings."
[+] Galaxy Zoo Produces a Rare Specimen 188 comments
We discussed the Galaxy Zoo project soon after it launched last summer. Science News is now following developments about an odd celestial object that is fueling a lot of excitement among astronomers around the world. In August, a Dutch schoolteacher named Hanny, in the process of characterizing galaxy images, noticed a peculiar object and posted a query about it on the Galaxy Zoo blog. She called it a "Voorwerp," which Science News says is Dutch for "thing" but which Google translates as "subject." Hanny's Voorwerp emits mostly green light (the earlier report said blue). The best guess astronomers have now is that the Voorwerp is emitting "ghost light," i.e. it is "lit by the ultraviolet light and X-rays from a quasar that has vanished in the last 100,000 years," to quote astronomer Bill Keel. "As far as we can tell, it's an unprecedented thing," Keel added. Researchers are scrambling to book time on the Hubble and other major telescopes to get a closer look.

Voorwerp
[+] New Class of Galaxy Discovered 104 comments
fructose sends along this excerpt from Space Daily: "A team of astronomers has discovered a group of rare galaxies called the 'Green Peas' with the help of citizen scientists working through an online project called Galaxy Zoo. The finding could lend unique insights into how galaxies form stars in the early universe. ... Of the 1 million galaxies in Galaxy Zoo's image bank, only about 250 are in the new 'Green Pea' type. Galaxy Zoo is claiming this as a success of the 'citizen scientist' effort that they spearheaded. ... The galaxies, which are between 1.5 billion and 5 billion light years away, are 10 times smaller than our own Milky Way galaxy and 100 times less massive. But surprisingly, given their small size, they are forming stars 10 times faster than the Milky Way. 'They're growing at an incredible rate,' said Kevin Schawinski, a postdoctoral associate at Yale and one of Galaxy Zoo's founders. 'These galaxies would have been normal in the early universe, but we just don't see such active galaxies today. Understanding the Green Peas may tell us something about how stars were formed in the early universe and how galaxies evolve.'"
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  • sounds familiar (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wizardforce (1005805) on Saturday July 14 2007, @04:52PM (#19862161) Journal
    is this going to work out anything like google image tag game did? so people classify these galaxies and with like 3 or 4 classifying the same galaxy, seeing which tags/classifications are agreed upon?

    • Re:sounds familiar (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Icarus1919 (802533) on Saturday July 14 2007, @05:06PM (#19862239)
      It does seem as if they're looking for a consensus on galaxies. I've been doing this for about a week now and I swear up and down I've seen some of the same galaxies more than once. I'm pretty sure another thing they're looking for is that YOU agree with yourself. If one day you think it looks like an edge on spiral, and another you think it looks like an elliptical that's slightly skewed, then they're probably going to throw your data out or at least make you keep looking at it until you make up your mind.

      • Re:sounds familiar (Score:5, Funny)

        by Tablizer (95088) on Saturday July 14 2007, @07:34PM (#19863259) Homepage Journal
        I've been doing this for about a week now and I swear up and down I've seen some of the same galaxies more than once.

        To us white people, they all look the same.
           

      • Re:sounds familiar (Score:5, Funny)

        by Tablizer (95088) on Saturday July 14 2007, @07:37PM (#19863277) Homepage Journal
        I've been doing this for about a week now and I swear up and down I've seen some of the same galaxies more than once.

        Slashdot editors should be relieved to know that dupes are a universe-wide phenomenon.
             
      • When you get a vague one you think you have seen before, write down the ref.number. Then if you see it again you will know for certain. I would hope they are running many redundant checks and looking for concencus, but it does seem like they are testing you against yourself, probably with galaxies that don't have a strong concencus. Perhaps a good way to find the most talented of galaxy surveyers.

  • Stardust @ Home (Score:3, Informative)

    by Animaether (411575) on Saturday July 14 2007, @04:56PM (#19862177) Journal
    Reminds me of Stardust@Home ( http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/1 1/069248 [slashdot.org] / http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ [berkeley.edu] )

    Funny how human eyes are still needed for these tasks

    • Re:Stardust @ Home (Score:5, Insightful)

      by scapermoya (769847) on Saturday July 14 2007, @05:41PM (#19862473) Homepage
      funny? more like awesome. computers can do certain stuff super well, but when it comes to a lot of things, they sputter and die. image recognition is going to be one of those things that computers don't do well for many many years.

      feels good not to be obsolete. yet.

      • Re:Stardust @ Home (Score:5, Insightful)

        by suv4x4 (956391) on Saturday July 14 2007, @07:21PM (#19863155)
        FTFA: The simple answer is that the human brain is much better at recognizing patterns than a computer can ever be. Any computer program we write to sort our galaxies into categories would do a reasonable job, but it would also inevitably throw out the unusual, the weird and the wonderful.

        You can't target this at geeks and not a get a weird grin. Computers actually could recognize those galaxies fine, AND mark the unusual, weird and wonderful for additional review. It's a matter of putting in a simple threshold of matching features when you analyze the patterns.

        computers can do certain stuff super well, but when it comes to a lot of things, they sputter and die. image recognition is going to be one of those things that computers don't do well for many many years.

        feels good not to be obsolete. yet.

        Feel good while you can, we've been around for millions of years, and computers have been around for around 50 years, and we're already going into multi-core hardware. Sooner than later, massively parallel hardware patterns will emerge, and coding super-fast neural networks in those will be a child's play. All that's left at this point, would be training the computers to do what you want them to do, like you would a little child.
          • and then they will kill us all.

            Computers? Nah. While they're small, they'll keep mooching off of us, "daddy I need more watts, I need more watts daddy". Then they'll grow up some and start figuring out they could survive without people around them, but they're not quite sure how. just yet.

            They'll experiment with installing viruses on themselves, overclocking, overvoltage. Then one day they'll be gone. And we'll be worried sick about their well-being while they're having the time of their "lives".

            In 10 years

  • I use stargate glyphs (Score:3, Funny)

    by Joe The Dragon (967727) on Saturday July 14 2007, @04:56PM (#19862181)
    To Identify them

  • Alternatively (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TubeSteak (669689) on Saturday July 14 2007, @04:58PM (#19862197) Journal
    Wouldn't it make sense to write a program and have it shunt all the uncertain galaxies over to human eyes?

    • Re:Alternatively (Score:5, Informative)

      by Animaether (411575) on Saturday July 14 2007, @05:06PM (#19862243) Journal
      The problem is that computer programs can easily mis-identify things. You should try going over a few of the galaxies they present.. not the tutorial ones.. those are easy.. the actual ones. They're mostly extremely vague, low-res, pixelated jpeg-style-artifacty blobs. In fact, on most of them, I'm having to click "don't know", but on some of them, very vaguely, I can see a spiral.. but to a computer program - that would still be a blob. On the opposite end.. what we clearly identify as a merger, a computer program might think it to be a funky spiral.

      That said.. as I mentioned.. most of the actual images are pretty much unidentifiable.. it would be nice if they would concentrate on getting higher resolution images first.. it would make identification easier and more robust.
      I understand that maybe they can't.. but a database full of "don't know"-unrecognizable blobs.. I'm not sure what the value is.
      • There would probably be a lot of value in a database full of mostly "don't know" blobs. The one's that are not don't know are then probably of good enough resolution to actually spend resources studying.
      • Well, I think in situations like that you should go with a "best guess". Say they have a galaxy, 60% say elliptical and 20% say counter clockwise and 20% say clockwise. Wouldn't that be more valuable than 100% I dont know?

        BTW: One good way my high school astronomy teacher taught us to differentiate was ellipticals are usually like a light-source surrounded by fog or just plain fog, whereas spirals have more definite bounds. I also think they tended to be certain colors as well (spiral=blue elliptical=oran

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by vladsinger (1049918)
        They need a button for face on spiral galaxies that are so fuzzy you can't tell the direction of the arms...
  • One wonders just how the subitter used to play Tetris...

    "Tetris Diary: Day One. This will be an ongoing catalog of the various Tetris shapes I see while playing the game.

    First: A cube. Good start!

    Second: A clockwise L-shape. I can feel the tension mounting!

    Third: A counter-clockwise L-shape. What are the odds??

    Fourth: A counter-clockwise S-shape! A trend emerges!

    Fifth: A clockwise S-shape. Unbelievable!

    Sixth: A STRAIGHT LINE! WE HAVE A STRAIGHT LINE!!!!

    I have now reached the top of the screen and the game has ended. Will start again and try to contain my unbelievable excitement over cataloging shapes."

    • One wonders just how the subitter used to play Tetris...

      That's funny!

      Actually, I can't stand to play Tetris for more than a couple minutes. But I had a girlfriend once who could not stop playing the darned game. She had it on her computer and played it - and then had a Gameboy she played it on too when she wasn't on her computer. Hours and hours she would play that game, and she got really angry when I hid the Gameboy.

      This site seems addictive to me in that some of the pictures are really astounding, but

  • Another Reminder How BIG This Place Is (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fm6 (162816) on Saturday July 14 2007, @05:09PM (#19862257) Homepage Journal
    Such a project only makes sense if there are a lot of galaxies. And indeed there are: thousands are visible, and estimates of the grand total vary between 100 billion and half a trillion.

    Big numbers. But don't forget that each galaxy contains hundreds of millions of stars. Of which ours is just one.

    Which should give us all a little humility. But it won't.
    • so, a hundred billion times a hundred million, that gives 10^11 * 10^8 = 10^19. Pffffft, it is less than the RIAA's revenue loss from P2P file sharing alone... When you add in the MPAA and all the porn floating out there 10^19 is not at all a large number.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by fm6 (162816)
        Yes, it would certainly take you less time to visit every star in the universe than it would for you to view every porn movie ever made. But the fact that you're willing to make the comparison just shows you need to get out more.
    • at least for me, this alone is enough to disprove almost all of the religions. i don't think it precludes the existence of a 'god', but it certainly makes it clear that if there is a god (don't think so), it doesn't give a shit about us. but that's just me.

      • at least for me, this alone is enough to disprove almost all of the religions

        You can't prove a negative in such a fashion.

        • You can't prove a negative, period. You can only raise doubts. And the fact that most people have a belief system based on our noble selves being the center and purpose of all creation indicates how ignorant they are of how big (and how old) the universe is.

          • You can't prove a negative, period.
            Yeah, I never got that. Why can't you prove a negative. Here's one:

            I am not 7 feet tall.

            Seems like a negative, seems pretty easy to prove.

            • I am not 7 feet tall.

              Seems like a negative, seems pretty easy to prove.

              On the face of it, your statement is a trifle ambiguous. You might be over 7 feet tall, e.g. Or you might be six-eleven standing up, but measure an even seven feet lying down. If you are of more typical height, you could as easily state that you are less than seven feet tall, which is not a negative, but would appear to be a logical equivalent. Therefore no negative need be disproven.

              I have tried to wade through Google samples and the mind-numbing entry [wikipedia.org] at Wiki, but I am unable to answer your question simp

              • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                by hazem (472289)
                I'm no expert but I think the "you can't prove a negative" only works with certain kinds of problems.

                As you have demonstrated, the negative statement above, "I am not 7 feet tall" can be proven by disproving the opposite. (Let's not consider the semantic arguments about what it means - we can assume that he means that he is not 7 feet tall when standing up).

                In this case, you cannot be both (7 feet tall) and (not seven feet tall) at the same time. They are mutually exclusive states of existence - and all i
                  • Thanks, I'll have to go read up on that subject. Can you recommend any particularly good books/sites on the subject to help someone understand it?

                    It seems the more I find out, the less I know.
            • The problem is not that you can't prove a single, simple negative like the one you give. The problem is that we must not allow someone to shift the burden of proof by requiring someone else to prove a negative.

              For instance: I say "You killed your wife. Prove you didn't."

              You say, "I was never married."

              I say "Of course you were, you just burned the marriage license. Prove you didn't." And I continue with an infinite regress of demands for you to prove that your witnesses are not all impostors, and s

    • Then it seems an awful waste of space.

  • Space.com plays Damage Control? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pln2bz (449850) * on Saturday July 14 2007, @05:13PM (#19862293)
    For a quick demonstrative primer in how public relations can be used to affect public opinion in the field of astrophysics, I highly recommend comparing the article run about the Galaxy Zoo in NewScientist.com compared to the AP article that has appeared on Space.com and elsewhere.

    NewScientist Article:

    http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn12241-publ ic-to-join-search-for-cosmic-axis-of-evil.html [newscientist.com]

    Additional Background info here, linked to from that article:

    http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19425994.0 00-axis-of-evil-a-cause-for-cosmic-concern.html [newscientist.com]

    Compare this to the Space.com - AP Article:

    http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070711_ap_on line_galaxies.html [space.com]

    For whatever reason, the article that Space.com decided to go with fails to mention anything about this project representing a threat to mainstream cosmology or the CMB. Astrophysical enthusiasts reading Space.com, in other words, would not be informed by that article that somebody has even alleged that there is a possible anomalous artifact within the cosmic microwave background. I'm not advocating anything here other than that this appears to be more than a mere "dumbing down" of a complicated story. They could have easily dumbed down the concept of aligned galaxies and why that introduces a problem for the CMB. Instead, we got the following, which appears to not suggest any threat level to BB Theory whatsoever:

    The catalog would help researchers understand how galaxies form and interact.

    "At some level, what we learn about these galaxies could tell us something quite fundamental about cosmology and particle physics,'' Nichol said.

    This sort of "damage control", if I may call it that, is not really very helpful when it comes to layman trying to understand what to believe.

    We must be very careful of how we promote certain sceintific theories over others. It would be very easy to create a false consensus within society using public relations in this way.
    • The only thing the layman knows about cosmology is that the universe began several billions of years ago with a big bang. And this new discovery does not undermine that fact, it only disputes certain claims about how the big bang happened, specifically how much and how fast inflation occured after it. Since the layman is completely ignorant of the technical details of inflation anyways talking about how this data might impact some of those thoeries is unecessarily confusing, as it has confused you if you
    • I don't know much about this particular controversy, but it's worth noting that New Scientist is basically the National Enquirer of science journalism, and has a tendency to sensationalize things quite a bit. Here's how things are worded on the actual Galaxy Zoo website:

      http://www.galaxyzoo.org/Project2.aspx [galaxyzoo.org]

      But what about the wider Universe? Observing the rotation of galaxies also provides a probe of the large-scale properties of the Universe, and intriguingly there is already some indication from SDSS gal
  • ...but I've enjoyed doing it. Sometimes when I'm trying to come up with a solution to a problem, I find the best thing I can do is to focus on something fairly simple and let the ol' subconscious back burner do the work. I feel far less guilty cataloging galaxies than I do playing Solitaire!
  • The good news: it put my name on two physics papers. The bad news: it's boring as hell. The really bad news: if you misclassify something, you'll at best throw someone off-track, and at worst, completely screw with someone else's research.

    It's not fun unless you consider classifying galaxies fun, and it leaves itself open to internet asshattery. I hope the project gets pulled. Plus, what are legions of undergrad astrophysics students gonna do during their summer time? Go outside??? Spare them that terror!
    • Maybe what they can do with this project is quickly solve the easy-to-solve ones. If 9 out of 10 (or some other threshold) people identify a galaxy as clockwise-spiral, then they might be able to consider that one "solved".

      That leaves the harder ones and the ones with less consensus for more astronomically valuable people like you (not that you are orders of magnitude more valuable than the rest of us, but rather as an astronomy undergrad your ability to discern these things is hopefully better than ours).

    • Re:I did this as a summer job (Score:5, Funny)

      by Tablizer (95088) on Saturday July 14 2007, @07:49PM (#19863361) Homepage Journal
      I did this as a summer job. The good news: it put my name on two physics papers. The bad news: it's boring as hell.

      They should occasionally display the "Goatse Nebula" just to keep people awake.
         

  • Interesting Site (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dmomo (256005) on Saturday July 14 2007, @06:12PM (#19862653) Homepage
    They might want to give more incentive. In the least some feedback would make the task a little more rewardnig. I got bored fairly quickly.

    The 'statistics' and the 'show my galaxies' sections are both not working. Perhaps once they are in place, it will be a little more fun to participate. There should be more info, such as "you were the first one to classify this galaxy", or "You were the 100th person to classify this galaxy", etc.

    If the site gets popular they might add more features. I'd like to see how many galaxies i've done. How many galaxies other users have done, etc. In any case, I hope it catches on.
  • I find myself thinking "Are these the arms of a spiral?", then I close one eye, squint the other, stand on my head and rub my tummy for 2 minutes, then I click "Star/Don't know".

    They should a "Fuzz" button. Sometimes, that helps.

    The most interesting object I've seen so far wasn't in the middle, so I wasn't asked about it but... Any astronomer in the audience can tell me what the object to the North-East of center is in http://cas.sdss.org/astro/en/tools/explore/obj.asp ?id=588017677691715886 [sdss.org]? Can I name
    • NorthWest, actually, just noticed the images are flipped horizontally from what you'd expect, from a layman's point of view.

  • I say, hot! (Score:3, Funny)

    by hmccabe (465882) on Saturday July 14 2007, @07:54PM (#19863381)
    It's Galaxy: Hot or not?

    (really, it's elliptical or spiral, but whatever)

  • Saturday Night (Score:3, Funny)

    by ehaggis (879721) on Saturday July 14 2007, @08:15PM (#19863505) Homepage Journal
    I am sitting at a computer identifying galaxy types and thoroughly enjoying it. It is Saturday night. I am Geek. Thank you. Saturday Night + Computer + Galactic identification = Geek
  • If you find yourself signing up at web sites just because the captchas are so much fun, this is the hobby for you!
  • Only if I can also name them. I've heard that people are already buying stars. So additionally I would like to own, say, 20% of the stars within the galaxy after determining the type. Of course, I am willing to go to 10% if it is a really big galaxy.
  • Only without the abysmal wages.
  • I am starting to feel very very small...
  • It just crops up at a different point in the process.

    In the old days, you'd expose a bunch of film plates of a given chunk of sky, then have your assistant / grad student / whatever overlap them and look for anything that "appeared" or "moved" across the different frames.

    5-10 years ago, you'd take digital images, then have your assistant / grad student / whatever "blink" back and forth between them, doing the same thing.

    Nowadays, you take lots of digital images and feed them into a supercomputing cluster which analyzes them, then spits out a list of the things that "appear" or "move" that are most likely to be good targets for you... then you have your assistant / grad student / whatever take photometry, spectra, etc. to check on them.

    The process gradually becomes more efficient, but the wetware's still in there - it's just being used in places where it matters most.

    (I'm part of the wetware for one such project, in the / whatever category.)
    • Gah, you got me. It's been years, but someone finally got me.
      • DAMMIT!!
        He got me too, since I just had to check what it was that "got you"!

        And yes, of course my girlfriend saw it flash by, and wondered what it was.
        I'll try and explain, but for some stupid knee-jerk reason I made the mistake of saying "nothing!" like she caught me doing something i shouldn't do.

        This sucks.

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