Identify Galaxies Using Spare Wetware Cycles 136
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."
sounds familiar (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:sounds familiar (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:sounds familiar (Score:5, Funny)
To us white people, they all look the same.
Re:sounds familiar (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot editors should be relieved to know that dupes are a universe-wide phenomenon.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Directional bias in the UI (Score:2)
The easy way to solve this would be display each image to users as the original 50% of the time, and as the mirror image 50% of the time, reversing interpretation of the user input where appropriate. Then any biases should cancel out. But, if their grid overlay is accurate, they
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)
PROOF:
http://one.fsphost.com/potterspoiler/index_files/i mage017.jpg [fsphost.com]
http://one.fsphost.com/potterspoiler/index_files/i mage019.jpg [fsphost.com]
http://one.fsphost.com/potterspoiler/index_files/i mage021.jpg [fsphost.com]
http://one.fsphost.com/potterspoiler/index_files/i mage023.jpg [fsphost.com]
The scar had not
Stardust @ Home (Score:3, Informative)
Funny how human eyes are still needed for these tasks
Re:Stardust @ Home (Score:5, Insightful)
feels good not to be obsolete. yet.
Re:Stardust @ Home (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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
Re: (Score:2)
all computer programs today are good at is looking at the past and hoping
Re: (Score:2)
If we'd be able to create single-core CPU's with the performance of multi-core, we wouldn't create multi-core.
So just in what way multi-core is foreboding future CPU performance, I do not know.
Re: (Score:1)
About 6 months ago I *did* read about somebody classifying galaxies using automation and being satisfied with the results. Unfortunately, I don't remember where.
Re:Stardust @ Home (automation) (Score:1)
I use stargate glyphs (Score:3, Funny)
Alternatively (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Alternatively (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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:1)
I think a lot of the images are red because they are red-shifted.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Now, put one of these in Photoshop and smear it with "Gaussian blur" and almost anybody can "sort of" see spiral arms.
The GZ tutorial fails to say much about ellipticals, including that they're the majority (70 percent, IIRC) of galaxies. But
"More Addictive than Tetris"? (Score:5, Funny)
"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."
Re: (Score:2)
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
I'm already dreaming spare wetcycles already, enou (Score:1)
Does this mean my wetware has been assimilated already?
...Of course this discussion is merely hypothetical.
Re: (Score:2)
Another Reminder How BIG This Place Is (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I am not 7 feet tall.
Seems like a negative, seems pretty easy to prove.
Re: (Score:2)
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)
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
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
It seems the more I find out, the less I know.
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:1)
So "there are no 300-foot tall humans" would be and example of what you'd need to prove.
Hmmm....
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
But God has a bigass Beowulf Cluster running Care 5.02.
Re: (Score:1)
But only *our* galaxy has slashdot.
If we're alone (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Could we be part of a bigger system? (Score:2)
Space.com plays Damage Control? (Score:5, Interesting)
NewScientist Article:
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn12241-pub
Additional Background info here, linked to from that article:
http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19425994.
Compare this to the Space.com - AP Article:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070711_ap_o
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:
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Have you investigated the Aristarchus and Tycho craters on the Moon? Those rays that come off of Tycho are not debris, but rather burn scars. It's also worth noting that this
It may not be a major contribution to science... (Score:2)
I love this initiatives (Score:1)
I don't know if my time will be usefull for science, but at least I like to participate in this kind of initiatives.
After hours playing Tetris I usually feel guilty for my waste of time.
There are beatifll pictures and the fact that I could discover something really interesting encorage me.
I should be more initiatives like this.
I did this as a summer job (Score:2)
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!
Re: (Score:2)
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)
They should occasionally display the "Goatse Nebula" just to keep people awake.
Re: (Score:2)
Spare wetware cycles? (Score:1)
at 4.1335978835978835978835978835979e-7 Hz this could take a very long time.
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting Site (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Lots of squinting. (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Binary system (Score:2)
Free Pr0n (Score:1)
I say, hot! (Score:3, Funny)
(really, it's elliptical or spiral, but whatever)
Saturday Night (Score:3, Funny)
In other words... (Score:2, Funny)
Only if (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Astronomy's own Mechanical Turk! (Score:2)
After looking at galaxy after galaxy... (Score:2)
Rotation immaterial (Score:1)
Wow, I can see a message in the stars ! (Score:2, Funny)
why login / register (Score:1)
Maybe I am not the kind of people they are trying to attract, but I wonder: Why have this kind of "security" on a project like this?
Re: (Score:1)
Wow! This picture is awesom! (Score:1)
I am not an astronomer, but I think it is a huge colision of an eliptical galaxy sucking a huge eliptical one.
http://cas.sdss.org/astro/en/tools/chart/chart.as
Human screening is still widely used in astronomy. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.)
GalaxyZoo Report (Score:2)
Check this out (Score:2)
588298661962973323 [sdss.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Use it as a captcha (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
One friend look at the same image and said
-What? I see nothing but a white blur image? It could be anything
-See carefully and USE YOUR IMAGINATION.
-Ok. Now I think I am able to see your clockwise spiral galaxy.
The brain is a box of surpises.