An army of galaxy hunters

red — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 22:45:26 GMT

Since the title is "An Army of Galaxy Hunters", I recalled a post I made a while ago here:

http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/009068.html

I wonder if a technique like the one described here could be used to find roadside bombs or similar bad stuff?

An army of galaxy hunters

John Edison NJ — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 12:59:01 GMT

For the comment above for red... Where did that mindset come from!??! How can you go from viewing galaxies in space to roadside bombs in Iraq? What are you going to have people do, view pictures from Satellite feed to see desert and towns? Im so confused where you put this logic together.

An army of galaxy hunters

Frank, Dallas, TX — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 14:54:48 GMT

Pardon me for questioning the advancement of human knowledge, but exactly what do we gain by classifying all the galaxies? Does that knowledge in turn lead to a greater knowledge of the workings of the universe? Or is this project just the advancement of knowledge for its own sake?

An army of galaxy hunters

bill smith — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 15:20:58 GMT

Well! with the way we are treating our planet we had better be doing something to find a new home.

An army of galaxy hunters

Rob MI — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 17:15:22 GMT

To Frank's comment. Knowledge about many different things sometimes leads researchers to make strange connections, and that's where breakthroughs come from. You may not see the need for galaxy classification now, but in future for instance, some new features of gravity may be uncovered that help to solve grand unified field theory.

An army of galaxy hunters

Fred — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 18:40:09 GMT

Frank, Frank, Frank....good question, I think. We do not know what part of discovery will make our understanding greater because to know that would make it so we already knew what to look for...and we don't. We are just beginning to undertsnad the universe, especially in Cosmology. I think it's a wonderful project.

An army of galaxy hunters

M Stanley, Tombstone AZ — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 19:50:34 GMT

I wish the Galaxy Zoo luck - they'll need it. A large number of the galaxies aren't clearly spirals or elliptical, and to decide which, you have to know something about galaxies. Unfortunately, this knowledge isn't part of their tutorial or anywhere else on their website. A large number of these galaxies are going to be mis-classified based on "majority rules". Anyone - anyone at all, regardless of knowledge - can simply wade in and start clicking buttons.

I was participating in this study until I realized all I was accomplishing was negating the bogus classifications of someone who knows less about galaxies than a goat. This would be ok except, there's thousands more of these guys and only one (now zero) of me.

An army of galaxy hunters

Des Emery, St. Thomas, ON, Canada — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 04:32:11 GMT

The time element must be included somewhere in this project though it isn't specified. The age at which we observe a particular galaxy will determine what we are seeing, and therefore what shape it is - or rather 'was' when it's light left it. Since then, it might have changed shape, collided with or passed through another galaxy, and now be something else. Correlating the results of the count with the age of the various galaxies observed might give us some idea of how creation has changed over time.

An army of galaxy hunters

Andy, Michigan — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 07:41:37 GMT

Frank... the benefits of this kind of project may not be immediately obvious, but thats the nature of statistical data. I imagine that the patch of sky being surveyed has been mapped out in a grid fashion and perhaps they have estimated the distance to each pictured galaxy. As more and more data is collected it's like fitting pieces into a 3D puzzle. Perhaps patterns will take shape in the distribution of galaxy types that are not so obvious as when you look at the area as a flat picture. Then again maybe there's no pattern. Either way it will give us a better understanding of things.

M Stanley... You are exactly the kind of person that this project needs most. This seems like a test of the interest of people in space and participation in this sort of project, as such I believe they have probably tried to cut to the lowest common denominator for the sake of getting the best response. Maybe you could suggest some training improvements or put up a companion website with more information for those interested.

And last but not least... Red..... I can understand your thinking that some form of distributed picture analysis to pick out changes in landscape and such might help war efforts, but the logistics would be a nightmare. If we take a picture of a galaxy now and someone takes a picture 100 years from now, it wont have changed much. On the ground in a war zone it could change hourly, and chances are that by the time a small change, like evidence of a buried bomb, was noted, it would already be too late to save lives. I dont think they would be very forthcoming in letting thousands of webizens scope out pictures that show their spy capabilities anyway. Especially since the "bad" guys could be looking too and modify their practices to avoid detection based on what could be seen.

An army of galaxy hunters

Chris Lintott, Oxford University, UK — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 18:54:10 GMT

Hi

Thanks for commenting on our project; and for the article. To respond to M Stanley's comment - we definitely do not want people to use other knowledge to classify the galaxies, we want them organised by their shape. No knowledge is required for this! In the past, astronomers have had to resort to proxies for shape, picking galaxies by colour, size, mass and a whole host of other things and hoping that they'd actually found spirals and ellipticals. On the whole these techniques are okay, but we want to be able to have a clean sample and then study their colours, sizes and masses. There is a huge wealth of information that can come from such a sample, which has the potential to sort out a lot of the problems with our theories of galaxy formation.

I hope that helps clear up the misunderstanding; it's the human ability to recognise patterns we're using, not its ability to learn astrophysics.

An army of galaxy hunters

steve la ca — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 23:22:27 GMT

talke about the milky way are we part of it ?