Citizen Scientists Help Explore the Moon 60
Pickens writes "NPR reports that NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is doing such a good job photographing every bit of the moon's surface that scientists can't keep up, so Oxford astrophysicist Chris Lintott is asking amateur astronomers to help review, measure, and classify tens of thousands of moon photos streaming to Earth using the website Moon Zoo, where anyone can log on, get trained, and become a space explorer. 'We ask people to count the craters that they can see ... and that tells us all sorts of things about the history and the age of that bit of surface,' says Lintott. Volunteers are also asked to identify boulders, measure the craters, and generally classify what is found in the images. If one person does the classification — even if they're an expert — then anything odd or interesting can be blamed on them. But with multiple independent classifications, the team can statistically calculate the confidence in the classification. That's a large part of the power of Moon Zoo. Lintott adds the British and American scientists heading up the LRO project have been randomly checking the amateur research being sent in and find it as good as you would get from an expert. 'There are a whole host of scientists ... who are waiting for these results, who've already committed to using them in their own research.'"
This is great!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Uranus? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Uranus? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sorry,but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all. It's now called Urectum.
Reminds me of the game Mass Effect 2. They had a little Easter egg in there.
You had to harvest planets for mineral resources in order to have the raw materials for upgrading your equipment. You harvest a planet by orbiting it and sending robotic probes to the surface that presumably bring back the raw materials from their landing sites. When you send a probe down to any planet, your ship's computer (an AI) says things like "launching probe" or "probe launched".
You can visit the Solar System in this game. If you orbit Uranus and launch a probe there, the computer voice says "Now Probing Uranus". It says that only once and it's the only time it says anything other than the standard phrase.
Think of the grad students! (Score:5, Funny)
This is exactly the sort of mind numbing work grad students should be doing for a pittance. This will put them out of work! We are not providing the right incentives to create our next generation of scientists.
(that was supposed to be humor)
Re:This is great!!! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Uranus? (Score:1, Funny)
The computer only says "Probing Uranus" once, but if you keep trying it eventually says, "Really, commander?" ...usually somewhere around the third attempt; I'm not trolling to get people to click endlessly.