Citizen scientist making amazing discoveries

22 April 2011: "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known," Carl Sagan wrote.

And now you can find that, thanks to Zooniverse, a unique citizen science website. Zooniverse voluntary, who call themselves "Zooites", working on a project called Galaxy Zoo, classification of distant galaxies taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope 1

"People are not only better than computer in detecting the nuances to distinguish the galaxies they can computer unlike spot things that look interesting, you do things", Zooniverse explains Director Chris Lintott, an astronomer at the University of Oxford.

Zooite Hanny van Arkel, a Dutch teacher discovers this strange green object in their cosmic soup of swimming:

If van Arkel noticed this unusual greenish object and a picture of him on the Galaxy Zoo forum posted, that experts not even knew what it was. 2 they called it "Voorwerp," Dutch for "Object."

Another group of Zooites "Peas" in you found, and called "Peas-Corp"

About one-tenth the size of the milky way was the peas small, round green galaxies. They are now as the most efficient star factories in the universe, are a large number of stars in a hurry. "It was easy to find"Peas"of the computer as soon as we knew they were there, but we would have noticed without the factor person a never," said Lintott.

Lintott began Zooniverse 2007, to a very large and unique problem: "I had too many galaxies on my hands," he explains.

Lintott was amended in the light of the classification form, one million galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. First, he did what would do scientists each even respect.

"I asked a student to be classified."

The student was good, but after he catalogued 50,000 images, it was obvious he needed help - much help-sort of the other 950,000. The solution came eases Lintott and the students they were sitting in a pub.

"Why not questions for voluntary?"

Zooniverse and their first project, Galaxy Zoo, were born.

"We were blown away by the response away." "We had so many hits, that our Web server crashed on the first morning!"

The server problem solved quickly and moved the project. Galaxy Zoo is voluntary with the Hubble Space Telescope deeper into space than ever before. And the Zooniverse team has proven that the Zooites are classifications as well as those of professional astronomers.

"Their contributions are extremely important," says Lintott. "Help us learn how galaxies form and evolve." "And they take their work seriously."

But, that does not prevent that they of brings a sense of adventure and pure fun of the research.

"Not long ago some Zooites asked us to take them on a pilgrimage in Zooniverse's birthplace." "It was a celebration in the pub rather at night!"3

After Galaxy Zoo began, scientists began Lintott approaching at conferences to help. "she realized that we have a great way to sort many data quickly found would."

Zooniverse offers several citizen science, including three more projects using NASA data. Moon Zoo voluntary use data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter crater, include that help write the history of the moon. Infrared images browse milky way participants in two NASA Spitzer Space Telescope of the milky way surveys collected inner regions. Help astronomers, to plan catalog interesting features, map of our Galaxy and future research. Zooniverse's planet hunters carry NASA Kepler telescope stars expected to host planets to find.

"I would like to one of their findings confirm and send an e-Mail to someone say, ' you have found a planet!" "

Please excuse now, this writer. It has to do planet hunting.

Author: Dauna Coulter | Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

If you are interested in learning more about Zooniverse, visit http://www.zooniverse.org/.

Footnotes:

(1) In the earlier phases of the project classified voluntary images of other telescopes such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

(2) Researchers took follow up telescope observations of the "Voorwerp".According to a press release from American Astronomical Society: "One of the strangest space objects ever seen is the penetrating vision is tested by Hubble Space Telescope from NASA/ESA." A mysterious, glowing green blob of gas hovers in the space close to a spiral galaxy. Hubble discovered fine filaments of gas and a bag of young star cluster in the giant object that is the size of the milky way. The Hubble are the latest findings from an ongoing probe of Hanny's Voorwerp revelations...In the sharpest view yet of Hanny's Voorwerp Hubble's wide field camera 3 and the Advanced camera for surveys have star birth in a region, is the Green object, that the spiral galaxy IC 2497 faces challenged - a bright, energetic object, which is powered by a black hole. "

(3) Zooniverse blog comments are a further note on the voluntary sometimes playful approach: "if I @ Galaxyzoo I like to do, I am a vindictive deity, galaxies discard..." "Is this wrong?"

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The amazing disappearing antineutrino

A revised calculation suggests that around 3% of particles of nuclear reactor have disappeared experiments.Measurements of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada were the secrets of the neutrinos probably - settled have new calculations have raised new questions.Roy Kaltschmidt / Lawrence Berkeley NAT ' L lab

Neutrinos have long with physicist with their uncanny ability to detect, more than two-thirds of the ghostly particles apparently go missing way from the Sun to the Earth to escape at a loss. Now a refined version of an old calculation caused a stir caused by suggesting that the researchers have also systematically the number of particles underestimated antimatter partner - antineutrinos - produced by nuclear reactor experiments.

The deficit could be determined not directly by turning in so-called 'sterile anti neutrino', and that would be clear evidence for effects beyond the standard model of elementary particle physics of antineutrinos caused.

Found in the 1960s, the physicist Ray Davis, deep underground in the Homestake gold mine in South Dakota, working the luminous flux of solar neutrinos, the hitting Earth a theorist John Bahcall predicted one-third, of calculations of nuclear reactions in the Sun. Davis later received a Nobel Prize for his contributions to the neutrino Astrophysics. This puzzle was in 2001, when the Sudbury the missing two thirds through an alternative means to detect found resolved Neutrino Observatory (SNO) in Canada. The SNO results were evidence that neutrinos have a mass that allows them to between three varieties oscillation: Electron, muon, and Tau. Davis had recognized only the electron neutrinos.

Results consistent with this theory so far about achieved experiments which the rate of antineutrino production from the decay of uranium and plutonium isotope masses. But the revised calculation1 accepted the conclusion this week of physical review D, that it not the whole story. While waiting for the double Chooz experiment in France to fully functional, neutrino Thierry Lasserre and his colleagues at the French Atomenergie-commission(CEA) in Saclay, set out to predictions about the rate of antineutrino production from nuclear reactors check. A calculation first done repeatedly in the 1980s by Klaus Schreckenbach at the Technical University of Munich, with more modern techniques, which allowed them to be much more accurate.

Their new estimate of the production rate is about 3% more than previously expected. This means that several generations of Neutrino and antineutrino have unknowingly missed a fraction of the particles experiments. "It was quite surprising for us," said Lasserre.

Double Chooz consists of two detectors measure the luminous flux which produced antineutrinos the Chooz nuclear power station in the French Ardennes, a detector, 400 m from the hotel and the other 1 km away. The far detector has been this year.

Stefan Sch?nert, a neutrino physicist to which technical University Munich, says the calculation is solid and has been validated with Schreckenbach. "they can reproduce the results." There is no way to this result. "It is very solid."

Art McDonald of Queen's University in Kingston, Canada and SNO says that people have carefully look at the calculation, which even a systematic error can have. But, he adds, "There is no doubt that it would have significance as a physics result, if it can be shown with more accuracy."

ADVERTISING

The result can one so "sterile" version, which interact with ordinary matter, not says that Carlo Giunti, a physicist at the University of Turin will show in Italy on the detection of neutrinos and antineutrinos, oscillating in a fourth type of neutrino or antineutrino. Other experiments have evidence for sterile particles, including the liquid scintillator neutrino detector at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the mini booster neutrino experiment or MiniBooNE, at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, seen and the search to confirm their existence is a hot area of physics.

Giunti says that the extent of the anomaly by Lasserre clearly were not statistically significant on its own, but that you promising cooperation, pointing in the same direction as a further anomaly by the sages Neutrino Observatory in the Caucasus 20052 studied the neutrinos from radioactive sources on the Baksan found. "Before there was a contradiction earlier experiments between [reactor and radioactive source], but now they agree", Giunti says.

Sch?nert says, that one important experiment is a measurement each shows that the rate of disappearance of antineutrinos from a source with the distance increases. "This would be the smoking gun," he says.

Mention, G. et al. http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.2755Abdurashitov, j. N. et al. find something offensive or inappropriate http://arxiv.org/abs/nucl-ex/0512041If or which otherwise complies with our terms or Community guidelines, select the link "report this comment".Comments on this thread are marked according to the time of booking.

This is a public forum. Please keep to our community guidelines. You can be controversial, but please you understand personal or offensive and keep it short. Keep in mind that our threads are for feedback and discussion - not for testing publishing, press releases and advertising.

You must be registered with the nature to leave a comment. Please log in or register as a new user. Be redirected back to this page.

View the original article here

The amazing disappearing antineutrino

A revised calculation suggests that around 3% of particles of nuclear reactor have disappeared experiments.Measurements of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada were the secrets of the neutrinos probably - settled have new calculations have raised new questions.Roy Kaltschmidt / Lawrence Berkeley NAT ' L lab

Neutrinos have long with physicist with their uncanny ability to detect, more than two-thirds of the ghostly particles apparently go missing way from the Sun to the Earth to escape at a loss. Now a refined version of an old calculation caused a stir caused by suggesting that the researchers have also systematically the number of particles underestimated antimatter partner - antineutrinos - produced by nuclear reactor experiments.

The deficit could be determined not directly by turning in so-called 'sterile anti neutrino', and that would be clear evidence for effects beyond the standard model of elementary particle physics of antineutrinos caused.

Found in the 1960s, the physicist Ray Davis, deep underground in the Homestake gold mine in South Dakota, working the luminous flux of solar neutrinos, the hitting Earth a theorist John Bahcall predicted one-third, of calculations of nuclear reactions in the Sun. Davis later received a Nobel Prize for his contributions to the neutrino Astrophysics. This puzzle was in 2001, when the Sudbury the missing two thirds through an alternative means to detect found resolved Neutrino Observatory (SNO) in Canada. The SNO results were evidence that neutrinos have a mass that allows them to between three varieties oscillation: Electron, muon, and Tau. Davis had recognized only the electron neutrinos.

Results consistent with this theory so far about achieved experiments which the rate of antineutrino production from the decay of uranium and plutonium isotope masses. But the revised calculation1 accepted the conclusion this week of physical review D, that it not the whole story. While waiting for the double Chooz experiment in France to fully functional, neutrino Thierry Lasserre and his colleagues at the French Atomenergie-commission(CEA) in Saclay, set out to predictions about the rate of antineutrino production from nuclear reactors check. A calculation first done repeatedly in the 1980s by Klaus Schreckenbach at the Technical University of Munich, with more modern techniques, which allowed them to be much more accurate.

Their new estimate of the production rate is about 3% more than previously expected. This means that several generations of Neutrino and antineutrino have unknowingly missed a fraction of the particles experiments. "It was quite surprising for us," said Lasserre.

Double Chooz consists of two detectors measure the luminous flux which produced antineutrinos the Chooz nuclear power station in the French Ardennes, a detector, 400 m from the hotel and the other 1 km away. The far detector has been this year.

Stefan Sch?nert, a neutrino physicist to which technical University Munich, says the calculation is solid and has been validated with Schreckenbach. "they can reproduce the results." There is no way to this result. "It is very solid."

Art McDonald of Queen's University in Kingston, Canada and SNO says that people have carefully look at the calculation, which even a systematic error can have. But, he adds, "There is no doubt that it would have significance as a physics result, if it can be shown with more accuracy."

ADVERTISING

The result can one so "sterile" version, which interact with ordinary matter, not says that Carlo Giunti, a physicist at the University of Turin will show in Italy on the detection of neutrinos and antineutrinos, oscillating in a fourth type of neutrino or antineutrino. Other experiments have evidence for sterile particles, including the liquid scintillator neutrino detector at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the mini booster neutrino experiment or MiniBooNE, at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, seen and the search to confirm their existence is a hot area of physics.

Giunti says that the extent of the anomaly by Lasserre clearly were not statistically significant on its own, but that you promising cooperation, pointing in the same direction as a further anomaly by the sages Neutrino Observatory in the Caucasus 20052 studied the neutrinos from radioactive sources on the Baksan found. "Before there was a contradiction earlier experiments between [reactor and radioactive source], but now they agree", Giunti says.

Sch?nert says, that one important experiment is a measurement each shows that the rate of disappearance of antineutrinos from a source with the distance increases. "This would be the smoking gun," he says.

Mention, G. et al. http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.2755Abdurashitov, j. N. et al. find something offensive or inappropriate http://arxiv.org/abs/nucl-ex/0512041If or which otherwise complies with our terms or Community guidelines, select the link "report this comment".Comments on this thread are marked according to the time of booking.

This is a public forum. Please keep to our community guidelines. You can be controversial, but please you understand personal or offensive and keep it short. Keep in mind that our threads are for feedback and discussion - not for testing publishing, press releases and advertising.

You must be registered with the nature to leave a comment. Please log in or register as a new user. Be redirected back to this page.

View the original article here