You can help classify galaxies for scientific research
An online project has begun to classify over a
million galaxies in an effort to determine if there is a special alignment of
spiral galaxies with an unexpected alignment of spots in the cosmic background
radiation observed in 2005. The public is invited to participate in the
classification of galaxies. If you would like to help, go to GalaxyZoo.org.
Participation includes doing a short tutorial to
help you learn about the types of galaxies and how to recognize them in photos.
After the tutorial there is a short test to see if you can perform the
classification task. Once you have passed the test (it's actually quite easy),
you can start to classify some of the million galaxies in the database. Do as
few or as many as you like.
Visual inspection is the best way to classify galaxies, but with a million galaxies to classify it will take a lot of volunteers to do the job. The primary task is simply to decide whether a galaxy is spiral or elliptical.
In April 2007, New Scientist reported, "[I]n 2005, Kate Land and João Magueijo of Imperial College London noticed a curious pattern in the map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) created by NASA's WMAP satellite. It seemed to show that some hot and cold spots in the CMB are not distributed randomly, as expected, but are aligned along what Magueijo dubbed the axis of evil."
"Michael Longo of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor analysed 1660 spiral galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and found that the axes of rotation of most galaxies appear to line up with the axis of evil (www.arxiv.org/astro-ph/0703325). According to Longo, the probability of this happening by chance is less than 0.4 per cent. 'This suggests the axis is real, and not simply an error in the WMAP data,' he says."
The galaxy classification project is intended to help determine if the supposed alignment of spiral galaxies with the "axis of evil" is real or imaginary.
Visual inspection is the best way to classify galaxies, but with a million galaxies to classify it will take a lot of volunteers to do the job. The primary task is simply to decide whether a galaxy is spiral or elliptical.
In April 2007, New Scientist reported, "[I]n 2005, Kate Land and João Magueijo of Imperial College London noticed a curious pattern in the map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) created by NASA's WMAP satellite. It seemed to show that some hot and cold spots in the CMB are not distributed randomly, as expected, but are aligned along what Magueijo dubbed the axis of evil."
"Michael Longo of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor analysed 1660 spiral galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and found that the axes of rotation of most galaxies appear to line up with the axis of evil (www.arxiv.org/astro-ph/0703325). According to Longo, the probability of this happening by chance is less than 0.4 per cent. 'This suggests the axis is real, and not simply an error in the WMAP data,' he says."
The galaxy classification project is intended to help determine if the supposed alignment of spiral galaxies with the "axis of evil" is real or imaginary.
Posted: Saturday - July 14, 2007 at 01:01 PM
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Published On: Jan 25, 2008 02:22 AM
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Published On: Jan 25, 2008 02:22 AM