Following the search for
extraterrestrial life with the SETI@HOME project and
huge amounts of further other projects that are being worked on
using a cross-platform distributed computing architecture named
BOINC, there is now a new
project for volunteer participants to help work on:
Stardust@HOME
The spacecraft Stardust
was launched in 1999 to catch dust particles of comet Wild 2.
Therefore a substance called aerogel was invented
which is capable of catching high speed dust particles and softly
de-accelerate them so they will stuck inside the aerogel and can be
brought home to mother earth without any damage.
The aerogel which holds the dust particles “maybe from beginning of
the universe” is now to be inspected by “you”. Since it’s almost
impossible to find a needle inside of a soccer-field, you can
imagine the work that has to be done to find particles from outer
space sticking inside the aerogel. So what has been done to solve
this problem ? “Simply”: The aerogel is scanned layer for layer by
a microscope and the images are stored in a database. From this
database you’re now able to access pre- and past-focussed images
and search for dust impacts.
Once you finished a short tutorial and training, you’re presented
new images to analyze mixed with already known images to test your
discovery “or spamming” skills.
Wow, that’s what I call science by wire….
extraterrestrial life with the SETI@HOME project and
huge amounts of further other projects that are being worked on
using a cross-platform distributed computing architecture named
BOINC, there is now a new
project for volunteer participants to help work on:
Stardust@HOME
The spacecraft Stardust
was launched in 1999 to catch dust particles of comet Wild 2.
Therefore a substance called aerogel was invented
which is capable of catching high speed dust particles and softly
de-accelerate them so they will stuck inside the aerogel and can be
brought home to mother earth without any damage.
The aerogel which holds the dust particles “maybe from beginning of
the universe” is now to be inspected by “you”. Since it’s almost
impossible to find a needle inside of a soccer-field, you can
imagine the work that has to be done to find particles from outer
space sticking inside the aerogel. So what has been done to solve
this problem ? “Simply”: The aerogel is scanned layer for layer by
a microscope and the images are stored in a database. From this
database you’re now able to access pre- and past-focussed images
and search for dust impacts.
Once you finished a short tutorial and training, you’re presented
new images to analyze mixed with already known images to test your
discovery “or spamming” skills.
Wow, that’s what I call science by wire….