|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
|
 Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 8:34 am Post subject: Instead of fighting over Atheism vs. Christianity |
 |
|
I suspect this project might be a better way to spend our free time:
http://www.comcast.net/news/technology/index.jsp?cat=TECHNOLOGY&fn=/2007/07/11/711969.html
| Quote: |
Online Help Sought to Organize Galaxies
By RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press Writer
Thu Jul 12, 2:05 AM
LONDON - Scientists need help sorting through an unusual digital photo album: pictures of about 1 million galaxies.
They are asking volunteers on the Internet to help classify the galaxies as either elliptical or spiral and note, where possible, in which direction they rotate. It would be the largest galactic census ever compiled, something scientists say would provide new insight into the structure of the universe.
"We're in the golden era of astronomy," said Bob Nichol, an astronomer at the University of Portsmouth in southern England. "We have more data than we can assimilate, and we need help."
Astronomers say computer programs have been unable to reliably classify the star systems.
Without volunteers, researchers would need years to wade through the photographs, which were taken automatically by a massive digital camera mounted onto a telescope at the Apache Point Observatory near Sunspot, N.M., Nichol said. With 10,000 to 20,000 people working to classify the galaxies, the process could take as little as a month.
Volunteers would sign on to the Web site, complete a brief tutorial and pick through one galaxy after another. The galaxies would be identified by several people to guard against errors and pranks, and scientists would rule on any disputes.
The catalog would help researchers understand how galaxies form and interact.
"At some level, what we learn about these galaxies could tell us something quite fundamental about cosmology and particle physics," Nichol said.
The project was inspired by similar projects at NASA, such as Stardust(at)home, which enlisted the help of thousands of volunteers to sift through grains of space dust gathered during a 2006 mission.
___
On the Net:
Galaxy Zoo: http://www.galaxyzoo.org |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
swetepete
Joined: 01 Nov 2006
Location: a limp little burg
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 12:20 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Good idea.
Couldn't see it on the page you linked to though; do you know if the program is up and running yet, or is it still in planning stage? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
HighTreason
Joined: 15 Jun 2007
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 2:09 pm Post subject: Re: Instead of fighting over Atheism vs. Christianity |
|
|
| mithridates wrote: |
| Instead of fighting over Atheism vs. Christianity |
That is a very interesting site, thanks! But I don't think Christians believe in Galaxies. They think that above the Earth there are things like Angels and gods and fairies and the like, so I don't know if the Christians can really participate...  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Demophobe
Joined: 17 May 2004
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 3:01 pm Post subject: Re: Instead of fighting over Atheism vs. Christianity |
|
|
| HighTreason wrote: |
| mithridates wrote: |
| Instead of fighting over Atheism vs. Christianity |
That is a very interesting site, thanks! But I don't think Christians believe in Galaxies. They think that above the Earth there are things like Angels and gods and fairies and the like, so I don't know if the Christians can really participate... |
So much for that.
Good link Mith...thanks. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
therooster
Joined: 11 May 2007
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 3:51 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| That is a very interesting site, thanks! But I don't think Christians believe in Galaxies. They think that above the Earth there are things like Angels and gods and fairies and the like, so I don't know if the Christians can really participate... |
Angels . |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
cbclark4
Joined: 20 Aug 2006
Location: Masan
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 5:47 pm Post subject: |
|
|
You are wrong!
Christians don't believe in fairies.
I think they are totally against that sort of activity.
Angels and Archangels and Devils and Demons and Spirits and Souls.
No fairies though.
Also giants I think. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Pak Yu Man
Joined: 02 Jun 2005
Location: The Ida galaxy
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 7:38 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| I'm giving it a go now. What else is there to do on vacation other than watching my wife become more pregnant. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 7:54 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| swetepete wrote: |
Good idea.
Couldn't see it on the page you linked to though; do you know if the program is up and running yet, or is it still in planning stage? |
Yes, it's all up and running. There's a short tutorial where you identify galaxies, then a small test, and once you pass that you can start identifying galaxies.
This is one of my favourite galaxy pictures so far:
Taken from the ground too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Binocular_Telescope
I love the fact that there's so much data that we need regular people to help sort it. Imagine that, a galaxy is around 300 billion stars and they don't even have enough manpower to spare most of these images a single glance. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 7:57 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Pak Yu Man wrote: |
| I'm giving it a go now. What else is there to do on vacation other than watching my wife become more pregnant. |
Not as much fun as getting her pregnant, I'll wager... |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
|
| Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 9:26 am Post subject: |
|
|
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=23206
| Quote: |
The Galaxy Zoo welcomes a flood of visitors
A new scientific project, called the Galaxy Zoo, is celebrating the enrollment of its first 85,000 participants, exploring the distant Universe via the Internet.
The goal of the project is to classify images of one million galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II), with the help of the general public.
The Galaxy Zoo opened its online gates in mid-July. "The response has been breathtaking," said Alex Szalay from Johns Hopkins University, a member of the Galaxy Zoo team. "The traffic was 20 times higher than what we hoped for. This shows the public is really interested in science if they feel they can contribute in a meaningful way."
Galaxies come in two main categories, explained team member Daniel Thomas of Portsmouth University. In spiral galaxies, like the Milky Way, most stars follow circular orbits and move in the same direction, giving the galaxy a flattened, frisbee-like shape. In elliptical galaxies, on the other hand, stars move on randomly oriented, elongated paths, so the galaxy as a whole has a football-like shape.
Visitors to the Galaxy Zoo take a short online tutorial then sort galaxy images into these categories. "Computers can do this classification automatically, but humans are far more accurate," said Thomas. "It's like trying to distinguish male and female faces --- no computer algorithm will do this as accurately as a person, because we are much better at identifying the most important cues."
But giving individual attention to a million galaxies takes many pairs of eyes.
Working around the clock, the Galaxy Zoo team made its website fast enough for the flood of participants, explained a tired Jan Vandenberg of Johns Hopkins. "The demand on the first day was so great, it overloaded a circuit breaker in our computer room!"
The team upgraded their computer hardware, simply to keep ahead of public demand. According to Szalay and Vandenberg, the Galaxy Zoo registered users have inspected nearly seven million galaxy images and produced more than 12.3 million galaxy classifications. At its peak, the Galaxy Zoo served up more than 60,000 galaxies an hour to users around the globe.
"We now have the world's largest computer working for us, through the combined power of all these human brains," commented Thomas.
"We wanted to create an intriguing yet intuitive web site," said Galaxy Zoo site designer Phil Murray, "so that anyone, from around the globe, would enjoy coming back time and time again to take part. It helps that the galaxies themselves are such beautiful and evocative objects."
As with any zoo, the oddest animals provide much of the fun. The Galaxy Zoo team has received thousands of emails from those who want to share their latest discovery. "It's very rewarding to hear from someone who has found a particularly beautiful image, or has a question about a set of merging galaxies they've observed," said Chris Lintott from the University of Oxford. "We've had complaints that the site is addictive, as you never quite know what the next image is going to reveal!"
"We want our catalogue to be the most accurate, as well as the largest," explained Oxford astronomer Anze Slosar. "To do that we need to have several people classify each galaxy. There's plenty out there for everyone, and the next galaxy is always difficult to resist."
The underlying science goal, explained Slozar, is to understand how spiral and elliptical galaxies form. "We have theories for how this happens, but to test them we need to know what kinds of galaxies are found in different cosmic environments. The combination of SDSS-II and the Galaxy Zoo will give just the information we need."
Already hard at work analyzing their data, the team hopes to welcome more visitors through the gates of the world's newest - and most unusual - zoo.
The Galaxy Zoo is open for business at www.galaxyzoo.org
ABOUT THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY (www.sdss.org)
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II) is the most ambitious astronomical survey ever undertaken. When completed, it will provide detailed optical images covering more than a quarter of the sky, and a 3-dimensional map of millions of galaxies and quasars. The data are released to the scientific community and the general public in annual increments.
Funding for the SDSS-II has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, the Max Planck Society and the Higher Education Funding Council for England.
The SDSS is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions: the American Museum of Natural History, Astrophysical Institute Potsdam, University of Basel, Cambridge University, Case Western Reserve University, University of Chicago, Drexel University, Fermilab, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Japan Participation Group, The Johns Hopkins University, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics, the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, the Korean Scientist Group, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (LAMOST), Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy (MPA), the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics (MPIA), New Mexico State University, Ohio State University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Portsmouth, Princeton University, the United States Naval Observatory, and the University of Washington. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
laogaiguk
Joined: 06 Dec 2005
Location: somewhere in Korea
|
| Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 2:49 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Nice, I'll get on that sometime (though might be hard in Seoul) 
though since you brought it up...
due to the fight of atheism vs. Christianity, we can study the sky without being branded heretics.  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
