Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Stardust@Home Lets Public Search Grains of Dust

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the bad-excuses-to-get-out-of-a-date dept.

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."

4 of 87 comments (clear)

  1. NASA have already used internet users' eyeballs by Trisha-Beth · · Score: 5, Informative

    Admittedly the search was for larger objects on Mars than the tiny flecks of space stuff from this mission.

  2. Site link by gkhan1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    for those of you to lazy to read the entire thing, here is a link to the website http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/

  3. The Missing Link by squoozer · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Stardust@Home Project where you can pre-register and find out more.

    --
    I used to have a better sig but it broke.
  4. NASA graphical page for Stardust location by psiXaos · · Score: 3, Informative

    Where is Stardust now?

    --
    "Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity" - Machine Beauty