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Stardust@Home Lets Public Search Grains of Dust
An anonymous reader writes "In a new project called Stardust@home, UC Berkeley researchers are inviting Internet users to help them search for a few dozen submicroscopic grains of interstellar dust captured by NASA's Stardust spacecraft. Rather than relying on the user's spare PC cycles, though, the system depends on their eyes." From the article: "Though Stardust's main mission was to capture dust from the tail of comet Wild 2 - dust dating from the origins of the solar system some 4.5 billion years ago - it also captured a sprinkling of dust from distant stars, perhaps created in supernova explosions less than 10 million years ago."
My computer cycles I could care less about but my time is valuable to me. Are there really that many people out there that A. want to to this AND B. have the time to do this. I am sure there are many people in catagory A and in catagory B. How many people are in both catagories?
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
...or is distributed computing itself being overdistributed? If they keep it up, everyone will be running a completely unique @home program by themselves, defeating the entire purpose. :P
Hopefully we can get some sort of useful information out of it.
Hopefully this landing won't be another cockup like the Genesis failure or we will be detecting grains of sand from the desert.
liqbase
If people are prepared to spot themselves on Google Earth, as well as other things, there's no reason why they won't look for specks of stardust.
Admittedly the search was for larger objects on Mars than the tiny flecks of space stuff from this mission.
for those of you to lazy to read the entire thing, here is a link to the website http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
Useing the mass public for something like this seems risky. For instance, right now I'm so tired I'm seeing stars and this thing isn't even on my computer.
Someone save me from this sanity.
Marjorie Dawes: Dust. Anybody? No? High in fat, low in fat? Dust. Anybody? No? Dust. Anybody? No? Dust. Anybody? No? Dust. Anybody? No? Dust. Anybody? No? Dust. It's actually very low in fat. You can have as much dust as you like.
Cheap UK and US VPS
As if I need my computer to find dust. All I have to do is take the back off and there's loads of it there already. Hey, Berkeley! I've found some, you crazy researchers!
What's that? Interstellar dust you say? Er, sorry...
bang goes my karma... again...
Why wouldn't they use image processing or pattern recognition techniques to do this? I couldn't find anything about this in the article, but i'm sure that if humans are able to detect specks of dust, they can also train a pattern recognizer to do the same, if not better.
The International Stardust Registry gift package is now available for a reasonable fee. It includes a beautiful 12" x 16" parchment certificate, available framed or unframed, with the name of your choice, dedication date, and coordinates of the particle of stardust. You'll also receive an informative booklet with details on the computer user who described your particle of stardust.
What better gift for a loved one or friend than a particle of stardust named in their honor? Note - we have been asked that no further particles be named "Ziggy".
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Is UCB going to distribute air filters to participants?
My machines process enough dust as it is. Dust-analysis in addition to dust-processing sounds to me like a high-risk task combination.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
They seem to use aerogel for this. It's so cool material woot!
I'd buy it, even if it's mostly just air.
From the article:
"It's amazing that Stardust flew without anyone having a clue as to how to get particles out of the aerogel after it came back," Westphal said. "You have to give NASA credit for taking a risk."
I doubt this very much because it realy isnt like nasa to spend probly a few million dollars on something they could have tested before sending it up in space...
Julien http://free.hostdepartment.com/8/81fortune/
The Stardust@Home Project where you can pre-register and find out more.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
I wonder if this idea can be extended. Using humans to perform computational tasks sounds to be a very interesting business model.
if a human can recognize the trails shouldnt a computer be able to ?
The article didnt mention any reason why a computer would not be able to do this.
does anyone know anything more about this.
makes me wonder is this is some sort of trial to test a distributed voulenteer workforce and they needed something interesting to get participants.
...will they name it after me?
From TFWS : 15 Jan 2006 : Stardust recovery
So the probe isn't recovered yet and if it crashes, all we're gonna search for is the probe in the dust, right ?
Where is Stardust now?
"Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity" - Machine Beauty
We will shortly be conducting a scientific experiment to locate particularly beautiful sandgrains on the beach of Copenhagen. A powerful automated microscope will comb the beach taking pictures, and anyone with a PC can join the effort to locate the most ornate and beautiful sandgrain. Participants that locate the most beautiful sandgrains will of course be eligible to name them.
Discoverers will get to name their dust grains.
Suggested names: Dusty, Sandy, Cindy, Sparky, Eartha, Ashley, Ashton, and Pierce
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I'm launching "cleaning@home" where users get the thrilling opportunity to keep my house clean. Users only have to show up at my door where they can aquire the "bucket-n-mop" application which effectively harnesses their spare "work-cycles".
This morning I was quoted as saying "This is a great new field for distributed applications. - careful the floor is still wet!"
I have a compsci friend who is a fairly dilligent amateur astronomer. He gets to name them.
Why did they have to name it @Home? All the other projects refer to distributed computing at home. This refers to distributed human work, so it should get a different suffix. Something related to clickworkers, mechanical turk or whatever would do fine.
I should probably point out that the project doesn't actually start until March 1st. You can preregister now though. What's interesting is that this also has tests you need to pass to be able to participate. This is different from NASA's clickworkers project where anyone could just run the java applet without registration and fill things out at will. The overall accuracy for clickworkers was higher than that for trained professionals, but perhaps there's something different with Stardust@Home that requires people to pass a test.
I can't help but feel that NASA is putting a brave face on the sensor problem and is pretending all is well when they actually expect Stardust to crash and there won't be any comet dust to look at.
You do sound kind of like the ppl that used to crow about how vaulable their time was and ppl wouldn't code for free. There are probably a lot more enthusiats that aren't capable of coding out there that would dedicate their time to ....wikipedia, or other altruistic pursuits. It's not so difficult to imagine anymore. /anything/ aside from the routine.
Astronomy is not easy, but it captures the imagination of anybody who has ever gazed up at the stars and wondered what's out there - that's billion of potential enthusiasts that otherwise cannot participate. Sure, why not - I guess it could work. Some volunteers might even get compensated grandly at their day job and still find time after hours to contribute to
This wouldn't even be necessary if the King of all Cosmos didn't get drunk and make all the stars burn out. I don't see why we need to be burdened with finding all the stardust when he was the one who messed it up. At the least he could get his son the prince to take care of it.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
YA RLY!
I take my children to see Madonna(..), but I never for once ever thought I was in the same business.Chris Rea.
I have signed up to participate, but I wonder what I will do when I see a green speckle forming on an image and slowly increasing in size !?
I hope they didn't name the project "Project Scoop" internally...
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
It's just not the same to say "WOW! I helped find a spec of dust!" instead of "WOW! I helped find an advanced civilation in another galaxy!"
Part of the attraction for some of the distributed computing projects is that those who donate their time get a sense that they are helping to solve a really big, important challenge. I'm not saying it's scientifically sound to make research decisions based on flair, but when it comes to getting folks to donate their resources (cycles, time, eyes, tax dollars) to a cause, it sure helps to have a little flair.
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
Your time must not be worth very much money!
Blar.
Perhaps user feedback helps the pattern matching algorithm learn?
Do we know?
m.
So if we hook this up with the SETI@home program, could we look for intelligent life in the universe that's inside the speck of dust? "Beam me up, Scotty: there's no intelligent life down here."
This game is available at my local game shop. "Let's Count Sand," "Bean Farmer, Extreme" and "Let's Wait in Line" are but a few other equally engrossing titles at the place.
Personally I cannot wait for the upcoming game "Nada 3."
"Giving money and power to governments is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." - P.J. O'Rourke
I think I'm game to scan through a few images out of curiousity, at least, which is probably what they're banking on. I admit I've got a pretty good chance of forgetting about it though, because the probe hasn't even landed yet, and after it does, it will take months I'm sure before they have the pictures online.
Reading the article, it sounds like they're expecting the interstellar dust to be distinguishable from the comet dust because of its speed. The comet dust is supposed to hit the aerogel and stop fairly quickly. Since the interstellar dust is moving much faster, it is expected to travel nearly to the back of the aerogel target before being stopped. Despite the fact that the particles are ridiculously tiny, they shouldn't be overly hard to spot because they leave a microscopic damage trail in the aerogel. In that case, wouldn't a computer program be equally as adept as human eyes in determining which trails extend further than expected?
Already found dust with my computer. It was sucked into the cpu heatsink!
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40& satitle=aerogel+NASA
the Stardust is in Vegas you morons!!
Duxbury was wearing a flightsuit on NASA TV after re-entry. Nice "Mission Accomplished" refernece.