An astrophysicist honors citizen scientists in the age of big data
The Crowd and the Cosmos examines the role of amateurs in science
The Pinwheel Galaxy, shown in this Hubble Space Telescope image, is an example of a spiral galaxy. In 2007, the Galaxy Zoo project asked citizen scientists to classify galaxies based on shape — spiral or elliptical.
Astrophysicist Chris Lintott had a problem back in the
mid-2000s. He wanted to know if the chemistry of star formation varies in
different types of galaxies. But first he needed to sort through images of
hundreds of thousands of galaxies to gather an appropriate sample to study. The
task would take many months if not longer for one person, and computers at the
time weren’t up to the challenge. So Lintott and colleagues turned to the
public for help.
The group launched Galaxy Zoo in 2007. The website asked volunteers to classify galaxies by shape — spiral or elliptical. Interest in the project was overwhelming. On the first day, so many people logged on that the server hosting the images crashed. Once the technical difficulties were resolved, more than 70,000 image classifications soon came in every hour. And as Lintott would learn, amateurs were just as good as professionals at categorizing galaxies.