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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."

6 of 87 comments (clear)

  1. Is it just me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...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

  2. Many eyes by spge · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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/

  5. Dust... Obliguraty little britian quote by rf0 · · Score: 4, Funny

    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
  6. International Stardust Registry by aapold · · Score: 4, Funny

    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