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Scientists Need Volunteers To Look At the Sun
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that Royal Observatory's 'Solar Stormwatch' needs volunteers to help scientists spot Sun storms — known as coronal mass ejections — before they cause damage on Earth. 'When you look up at the Sun obviously it's too bright to look at properly,' says Dr. Marek Kukula of the Royal Observatory, but 'with special instruments and telescopes you can see there's all sorts of stuff going on.' NASA already monitors the Sun using two 'STEREO' spacecraft that produce 3D images of earth's nearest star, which can show the trajectory of these explosions. However, the sheer amount of data means NASA's scientists are unable to analyze the data as closely as they need — which is where the world's Internet population comes in. After a brief tutorial, users get access to the actual 3-D images taken by the STEREO spacecraft. If a user believes they have spotted the beginnings of a solar storm, they can bring it to the attention of scientists. 'Every little bit counts,' says Kukula. 'I've spoken to the scientists involved and they all agree that even if you log-on and just do it for a few hours, get bored and never touch it again it's all really useful — and helps them to do their work.'"
Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun.
(But Mama, that's where the fun is!)
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Great name, Solar Stormwatch! It sounds like they should get uniforms.
I think Solar Weather@HOME would have been cheerier.
"Scientists Need Volunteers To Look At the Sun"
There's a spot burning a hole in my eye from just reading that title..
They can't do it themselves?
O.K. I'll take the night watch.
Lifted from SNL transcripts --
Grumpy Old Man: I'm oooooold! And I'm not happy! And I don't like things ... In my day, there was only one show in town -- it was called "Stare at the sun!" . ... it was and we liked it!
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Coronal mass ejections? I think I saw a clip of that on redtube.com.
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
Do not look at sun with remaining eye!
I wonder, instead of having humans analyzing these things forever, could they use the interactions with humans to 'train' some sort of visual analysis algorithm so that it learns how to identify the 'interesting' images? Then, in the future, maybe a computer can alert Nasa scientists of particularly 'interesting' images for them to manually analyze, while no longer needing public 'screening' by humans?
http://solarstormwatch.com/ slashdotted...
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
"After a brief tutorial, users get access to the actual 3-D images taken by the STEREO spacecraft"
Sweet! Do they send me complimentary solarstormwatch 3D viewing glasses, or do I need to use the ones I stole from Avatar?
... and now I have to get someone else to read Slashdot to me.
Next they will need meta meta moderators to sift through all the phony reports of sun spots. /. -for a fee- as they have experience.
Actually this could be contracted out to
When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal. I was terrified, alone in that darkness. Slowly daylight crept in through the bandages, and I could see, but something else had changed inside of me. That day I had my first headache.
If the problem is just the volume of data and not the lack of a good algorithm to do the detection wouldn't it be smart to go the folding@home/seti@home route and just throw massive numbers of donated CPU cycles at the problem?
How come I suspect that the Royal Observatory is going to be inundated with false positives, claiming, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"
However, this might be cool if they throw in a pair of 3D glasses . . .
. . . and a NASA secret decoder ring, so that you can snoop on what their other satellites and thingies are up to.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Any coronal ejection EMP pointed at us will arrive just at the time we see it giving us a warning time of a day, perhaps.
But what could we DO about it?
Here's a quote from one Mr. Carrington (http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/06may_carringtonflare.htm) from the last time this happened in 1859:
On that morning, he was capturing the likeness of an enormous group of sunspots. Suddenly, before his eyes, two brilliant beads of blinding white light appeared over the sunspots, intensified rapidly, and became kidney-shaped. Realizing that he was witnessing something unprecedented and "being somewhat flurried by the surprise," Carrington later wrote, "I hastily ran to call someone to witness the exhibition with me. On returning within 60 seconds, I was mortified to find that it was already much changed and enfeebled." He and his witness watched the white spots contract to mere pinpoints and disappear.
It was 11:23 AM. Only five minutes had passed.
Just before dawn the next day, skies all over planet Earth erupted in red, green, and purple auroras so brilliant that newspapers could be read as easily as in daylight. Indeed, stunning auroras pulsated even at near tropical latitudes over Cuba, the Bahamas, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Hawaii.
Even more disconcerting, telegraph systems worldwide went haywire. Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set the telegraph paper on fire. Even when telegraphers disconnected the batteries powering the lines, aurora-induced electric currents in the wires still allowed messages to be transmitted.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Headline should read, "Scientists need people that want to feel important to do their work for free".
Well, I was going to go analyze some images right now, but it seems the page won't load.....
....guess I'll just bookmark this one for later...
...deletion from list of unused bookmarks.
not much, just being forced to manually insert line breaks into my comment
should have had it...
Probably is easier/cheaper to build AIs smart enough for recognizing patterns that should be evident for half-blind volunteers, than building artificial eyes for them after several get damaged vision. Shit (and retinal burns) happens.
"How to save the Earth via the World Wide Web"
When I first read it; I scoffed ... but the more I thought about it, the more I now know it's true. Here's a simple test:
From the perspective of the "little man"
- Reports surface scorching Sun vomit approaching earth
- Report received
- Man eventually fries
From the perspective of Dr. Strangelove
- Receives report
- Replies: Thank you (bye)
- Closes hatch
- Proceeds to repopulate the Earth with super models
(Insert song here: "We'll Meet Again" by Vera Lynn)
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
She blinded me with science!
...of the crowd sourcing techniques that everyone on the web is going ga-ga about.
You know, if you stare at it head-on it'll burn your eyes out. But it's hard not to. I once took a pair of binoculars and stared at the Sun for over an hour. Curiosity I guess...
Taken from one of the best SNL skits
Maybe they just need help with logging in. http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2007-11-16/
That's funny. I thought a coronal mass ejection was what happened after I ate at Chipotle. I've not had a lot of luck getting volunteers to watch that.
;-)
Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set the telegraph paper on fire.
*nix running on telegraphs?!?!
That explains the printer is on fire message!
Even when telegraphers disconnected the batteries powering the lines, aurora-induced electric currents in the wires still allowed messages to be transmitted.
Is there anything *nix cannot do? ;-)
All joking aside, I imagine that was quite an interesting experience.
Something similar occurring today would likely cause a huge mess.
But what could we DO about it?
Maybe install a global Big Red Button®?
Short of that(and to be more realistic), we should start planning for controlled shutdowns and disconnections to weather the storm.
I'm sure that wouldn't prevent all damage, would be a big can of worms, etc., but it may help prevent total catastrophe.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Does it come with free 3D glasses??
The BORING sun always looks 2D to me. It'd be nice for a change.
I find it amusing the the image tag is for sun microsystems. I am surprised no one has mentioned it till now.
What happens when the Oracle System's Star goes Supernova ? Is it going to SPARC?...Is Coffee going to be supplied?...I haven't read much of the comments, but am I the only one to notice the subject icon on this story is the wrong Sun.
Good lord, has that Ellison fellow gone out and purchased the real sun now? Will he buy the moon next?
Can the editors PLEASE fix the icons? This isn't Sun Microsystems. This is about a star. This is as bad as Enlightenment being used to refer to metaphysics rather than an old window manager.
Can anybody tell me why they put sun microsystem logo in this article?
The picture on this story is Sun's symbol, not a picture of 'the sun'. Nice badonkadonk, by the way.
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
This reminds me of Amazon Mechanical Turk, which crowdsources people to do tasks which computers have trouble doing. It has been used to attempt to find people like Steve Fosset using satellite images and asking people to go through them. The search was unsuccessful though.
Don't stare at the sun...you'll use up all the light.
"Sunspots...cast a glare in my eyes."
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Am I missing something, but the article seems to be using the Oracle|Sun logo, while this is an astronomy discussion of the Sun.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
"CRAP! I got a coronal mass ejection right in the eye!"
This is why the OS needs to support animated wall paper. Then you can have your desktop continually updated with images of the sun. If even just the folks at NASA did this it might provide adequate monitoring for 8 hours a day. A screen saver could be nice too - I wonder which would get seen more often...
..
Orlando
-= This is a self-referential sig =-
Oblig Pi quote (Darren Aronofsky, 1998).