Astronomers and biologists at the top among researchers who use the help of the public
The last decade has seen an exponential growth of the phenomenon of "citizen scientists", members of the public who take part in real research projects , called together by scientists. A benefit of these initiatives are two groups: researchers, who use massive aid of large crowds of observers, and the public, which comes into contact with the concrete issues of research and can experience the thrill of "doing science" .
Despite the recent popularity of these projects, the idea of \u200b\u200busing aid to non-scientists over a century. Since 1900 the American Ornithologists regularly involve fans in the days of observation, and conduct a census to count the different species of birds, and the Association of American observers of variable stars launched a few years after a similar project, in which the audience was an active part in count and monitor, to the naked eye, this particular type of stars and their brightness variations.
The development of computers in recent decades has opened new perspectives for research, accelerating scientific progress in many disciplines. At the same time, the penetration of personal computers, along with powerful tools of Web 2.0, has given birth new ideas on how to engage audiences in exciting research projects.
Galaxy Zoo is one of these projects. Launched three years ago by a group of British and American astronomers has the ambition to give real astronomical images held by the public, which in turn should classify what you see.
The galaxies in the Universe have a variety of forms, just like the animals in a zoo, but most of them can be traced to two main morphologies: spiral galaxies or elliptical galaxies. The morphological classification of galaxies far beyond filling out a simple catalog, since it contains information on the state dynamics of galaxies: the spirals, the stars rotate around the center in an orderly manner, while moving in a much more chaotic than those in ellipticals. Identify what and how many galaxies belong to either class, and their relative distributions, it is extremely important to understand how they are formed and evolved .
The stunning photographs of galaxies relatively close to our left little doubt who the standings, but the subtleties of morphological most distant galaxies, whose images often have the appearance of small spots tell, are very difficult to locate. Also, recognize shapes is still an area in which the human brain is superior to the computer. Dealing with a million images of distant galaxies and seemingly formless, astronomers have decided to address the public. Since July 2007, and fans can not see the myriad of images and, using a very simple software to be used in catalogs.
In the early days, 35.000 members of the public had already classified a half million galaxies, the same galaxy is classified several times by different people, to take account of possible errors and uncertainties. Such an undertaking would have cost months of work (and maybe some diopter!) If it had been carried out by an individual student. Clearly contact public does not reduce the work of astronomers, in fact allows them to focus on the further steps of the analysis of a large sample of data. Have already been published at least a dozen articles in refereed journals containing results based on the valuable work done by the public, a crowd of over 200,000 people from 170 different countries.
The hunt continues in the zoo of galaxies: the updated site offers visitors a series of questions for each image. In addition to classification elliptical or spiral, in fact, it can indicate the presence of other small details: how did the spiral arms, if there is a ring, if it can be of two galaxies that are colliding and merging ... And the news is not only the public but also for astronomers: they are special positions were opened to researchers, dedicated to the coordination of the Galaxy Zoo and the development of similar projects for the future.
Even biologists have learned to exploit the use of "citizen scientists". One project that has had most success in this field is called Fold It (translated "Fold it"). Launched in 2008 by a collaboration of computer and biochemistry at the University of Washington, USA, offers the public a video game whose goal is to design proteins as efficiently as possible.
proteins, the building blocks of work cells, are composed of long chains of smaller components, called amino acids. There are 20 different amino acids, but depending on how they are arranged in the chain and the form in which it is "bent", may give rise to thousands of different proteins. Because proteins can contain up to a thousand amino acids, the number of possible combinations and shapes is immense. Reconstructing the shape of many proteins is one of the most important goals of modern biology, which clearly requires huge resources and long computation times even for the most powerful computers. The Fold It comes to the aid project, involving the public in a game that exploits the ability of the human brain to solve puzzles and visual problems to optimize the possible structures of proteins.
play in helping the research and, at the same time, learn something about the biology of our bodies and on the structure of galaxies in the universe: this is the work of modern "citizen scientists".
CLAUDIA MIGNONE
In the images, the graphical Galaxy Zoo and Fold It .
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