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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.
"Scientists Need Volunteers To Look At the Sun"
There's a spot burning a hole in my eye from just reading that title..
O.K. I'll take the night watch.
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
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?
"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?
You were lucky to have hydrogen. In my day all we had was a plasma of free protons and electrons and background radiation, and we LIKED it!
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
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.
They are doing. They're just installing the software in your brain :D
Requiem for the American Dream
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?
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