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Spacecraft Returns Seven Particles From Birth of the Solar System
sciencehabit writes "After a massive, years-long search, researchers have recovered seven interstellar dust particles returned to Earth by the Stardust spacecraft. The whole sample weighs just a few trillionths of a gram, but it's the first time scientists have laid their hands on primordial material unaltered by the violent birth of the solar system. Once the sample panel was back on Earth, the problem quickly became finding any collected particles embedded in the aerogel. Out of desperation, Stardust team members called on 30,714 members of the general public. The 'dusters' of the Stardust@home project volunteered to examine microscopic images taken down through the aerogel. They used the world's best pattern-recognition system — the human eye and brain — to pick out the telltale tracks left by speeding particles."
Isotopes. Read the Science article.
No thanks, I'd rather read The National Enquirer. It has less sensational hyperbole than Science.
But, but, but, Weekly World News has Bat Boy!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Unfortunately the eye and brain are not the best pattern-recognition system. Humans tend to categorise random patterns as non-random patterns that match things they are familiar with or want to see.
Which means they are the best at seeing patterns.
No-one ever said anything about ACCURATE patterns... :-)
I would argue for this kind of search that just seeing any kind of pattern has value in narrowing things down, even if it's false.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
FTA:
Two particles weighing in at about 3 trillionths of a gram each...[...]...âoeIt would be very easy to lose them.â
Well, not quite ready for 'Night at the Improv', worth a grin anyhow.
Only two particles out of only seven impacts, over 200 days shows just how 'empty'[1] space really is.
[1] 'empty' space can be surprisingly a deceptive statement in astrophysics, though...:-)
Gah, slashcode mangled the double parenthesis again!
When do we get proper unicode support?
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I've got dust particles from the origin of the solar system under my bed.
I'm pretty sure that was the last time anybody cleaned under there.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The microscopic images shown are roughly double the width of the average human hair (170 um). And the dust particle you are looking for in that picture is about the diameter of a human red blood cell (7 um).