[Galaxy Zoo]如何在3周里划分100万星系
来源：http://www.distributedcomputing.info/news.html原载：TIME - http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1975296,00.html
标题：How to Classify a Million Galaxies in Three Weeks - 如何在3周里划分100万星系
作者：Jennifer Pinkowski
日期：2010年3月28日
概要：对 Galaxy Zoo 项目的发展历程、当前进展、参与方法做了介绍，并对 Citizen science 模式及相关项目做了介绍。
有愿意帮助翻译的，请直接回帖（可以先占座，再翻译或编辑） 本帖最后由 hawkwolf 于 2010-4-4 14:37 编辑
How to Classify a Million Galaxies in Three Weeks
如何在3周里划分100万星系
http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2010/1003/galaxy_zoo_0318.jpg
Do you have an Internet connection, some free time and a penchant for staring off into space? Then Galaxy Zoo needs you.
Among the most ambitious and successful online "citizen science" projects to date, Galaxy Zoo asks its participants to help classify galaxies by studying images of them online and answering a standard set of questions about their features. For instance: Is the galaxy smooth or bulging? Is it elliptical or spiral? If it's spiral, how many arms does it have, and are they tightly wound or thrown open wide?
(See the top 10 scientific discoveries of 2009.)
您能不能连接因特网? 有没有闲暇时间? 是否喜欢凝视神秘的星空?如果是的话， Galaxy Zoo (星系动物园)需要您。
当今有众多雄心勃勃的也十分成功的在线“大众科研”计划， Galaxy Zoo项目是其一， 它邀请参与者研究其上线的图片来帮忙划分星系种类，并对它们的功能问题作些一般的解释。例如：这星系是扁平的还是凸镜状的？ 它是椭圆形的还是螺旋形的？ 如果是螺旋形的，它有多少个旋臂？ 旋臂是缠绕在一起的还是分散可见的？
（了解2009年十大科学发现）
Galaxy Zoo was first launched in 2007 by astronomers and astrophysicists from the U.S. and U.K. The goal was to get the public to identify the shapes of 1 million galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), which were photographed between 2000 and 2008 by a telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico. Because every feature of each galaxy had to be categorized by at least 20 people — having multiple classifications of the same object is important because it helps scientists assess how reliable each one is — astronomers estimated it would take three to five years to categorize all million galaxies.
It took three weeks. In the first year, 50 million classifications were made by 150,000 people. Galaxy Zoo became the world's largest database of galaxy shapes. There are now German- and Polish-language versions, and a Chinese one is scheduled to launch sometime in April.
(See pictures of Earth from space.)
2007年，Galaxy Zoo 由英、美的天文学家和天体物理学家首次推出， 目的是让公众帮忙来识别100万个星系的形状，这些图片由斯隆数字巡天（SDSS）于2000~2008年间拍摄的，SDSS是一台位于新墨西哥州阿帕奇峰天文台的望远镜。
由于每个星系的每个功能都要由超过20人进行过分类，[多次分类对于这类项目是很重要的、它有助于科学家来评估每条结果的有效性]， 天文学家们原来估计：要完成对这100万个星系的所有分类，会需要3到5年的时间。
实际上，只用了3周的时间。
再项目的第一个年头里，15万人已经定义了5千万个分类，Galaxy Zoo 成为了世界上最大的星系形状数据库。现在增加了 德语 和 波兰语 版本， 在2010年4月，还会推出一个中文版本。
（太空中的地球图片）
So successful was the project that it spawned Galaxy Zoo 2 in February 2009 to classify another 250,000 SDSS galaxies. To date, more than 57 million classifications have been made by some 265,000 volunteers (this reporter's contribution is, so far, a meager 267); another 5 million classifications will finish the job. There's also an entire "Zooniverse" of related citizen-science projects, which include simulating galaxy collisions to study mergers; hunting for supernovae and hypervelocity stars, incredibly rare stars that are so "fast," they escape the gravitational pull of a galaxy; and compiling collections of "irregulars," galaxies that defy classification.
It might be tempting to dismiss Galaxy Zoo as just an amusing diversion — fun in an I-play-a-scientist-on-TV kind of way. But astronomers — and volunteers — have made real discoveries by mining its crowd-sourced data. Among them: red spiral galaxies (most spirals are blue), green peas (small but energy-packed, star-spewing galaxies) and Hanny's Voorwerp, an amorphous blue blob spotted by Dutch schoolteacher Hanny Van Arkel, who learned about Galaxy Zoo on the website of Brian May, the former Queen guitarist turned astrophysicist.
项目的成功催生出Galaxy Zoo 2， 于2009年2月推出， 第二阶段的目标是划分另外25万个SDSS拍摄的星系的类别。
至今，26.5万名志愿者已经完成了5700万个分类（这个呈报者的贡献只有区区的267）；再完成500万个分类，就能完成第二阶段的任务了。
在相关的“大众科研”项目里，有个更全面的“Zooniverse”发布了,其中还包括模拟星系碰撞合并的研究；寻找 超新星 和 超高速星（一种罕见的以极高速度运行的星体，以至于它们能逃脱星系的巨大引力）；以及搜集那些违反星系定义的“非正规军”。
这也许会褪去Galaxy Zoo只是个消遣娱乐方式的假象，就像“我在电视上扮演的科学家”那样只算是个娱乐方式。 不过，天文学家们和众多志愿者们已经通过发掘公共资源数据取得了真正的发现，这包括：许多的 红色螺旋星系（多数旋臂是蓝色的）， “绿色豌豆”星系（体积小，但却包含巨大能量，恒星生成活动呈喷发状态的星系）； 还有“Hanny的物体”，一个荷兰教师 Hanny Van Arkel 发现的无规则形状的蓝色小团，她从布赖恩·梅（Brian May）的网站上了解的Galaxy Zoo。布赖恩·梅这个皇后乐队（Queen）的前吉他手，已经是个天体物理学家了。
Galaxy Zoo discoveries have been important enough that astronomers have investigated some of them separately, using Earth-bound telescopes as well as the Hubble Space Telescope. The project's findings have led to 10 scientific articles, which appeared in peer-reviewed journals, and six more are on the way. And a few "zooites," as the volunteers refer to themselves, hope to publish their own citizen-science research projects someday, with help from professional astronomers.
Galaxy Zoo 上的发现已经变得非常重要，天文学家们已经在使用地面望远镜以及哈勃太空太空望远镜来分别调查其中的一些。该项目的发现已经使10篇科学论文在同行认可的刊物上发表，另外还有6篇在写作中。一些“zooites”们（该项目志愿者们的自称）还希望有朝一日能发布他们自己的“大众科研”项目，来帮助那些专业的天文学家。
Citizen science — "the involvement of nonprofessionals in the scientific process," according to University of Oxford astronomer Chris Lintott, one of Galaxy Zoo's founders — is not a new concept. Distributed-computing projects like SETI@home, which hunts for radio signals that might indicate intelligent life in the universe, and ClimatePrediction.net, which tests the accuracy of global climate models, have long tapped volunteers' home computers to help process data. The difference between these projects and Galaxy Zoo — and its inspiration, Stardust@home, which asks volunteers to search electron-microscope images for interstellar dust particles collected in space — is that the latter two interface with not the volunteer's PC but with his or her mind.
This model — their data, your brain — may represent an increasingly common way to handle large data sets. Relatively cheap technology and bandwidth have made data collection almost too easy. Many scientists are now drowning in massive amounts of data, which they don't have the time, resources or brain power to analyze. "In many parts of science, we're not constrained by what data we can get," says Lintott, who is also the co-host of the long-running BBC series The Sky at Night. "We're constrained by what we can do with the data we have. Citizen science is a very powerful way of solving that problem."
He estimates that the perfect graduate student — essentially, a human computer that never eats, sleeps or takes a bathroom break — spending 24 hours a day, seven days a week analyzing Galaxy Zoo's data would have needed three to five years to match what Galaxy Zoo's volunteers collectively accomplished in the project's first sixth months.
大众科研 - “在科研过程中让非专业人士参与进来，”据牛津大学的天文学家、 Galaxy Zoo创始人之一，Chris Lintott所说， 这并不是个新概念。
众多的分布式计算项目，例如：捕捉地外智慧文明发送的无线电信号的 SETI@home、以及测试全球气候模型准确性的 ClimatePrediction.net ，已经在长期发掘众多志愿者们的家用电脑资源来帮忙处理数据。 与其它着重于分布式计算的项目不同的是，Galaxy Zoo 和 它的灵感来源Stardust@home（一个需要志愿者通过电子显微镜拍摄的图片来寻找在太空中搜集到样本里的宇宙尘埃的项目），这两个项目不仅结合了志愿者的PC，还需要他/她的智慧。
这种“他们的数据、你们的头脑”的模式，可能会成为处理大量数据的一个越来越常见的方式。相对廉价的技术和带宽，让数据收集越来越简单。现在的许多科学家被大量数据所淹没，一种他们没有充足的时间、资源或脑力去分析的海量数据。
也是BBC长篇系列节目 仰望夜空（The Sky at Night）的协办人的 Lintott 说：“ 在科学的很多方面，我们不是受限于能得到些什么数据，而是被我们该如何处理这些已得到的数据束缚了手脚。 ‘大众科研’是用来解决这个问题的十分有效的方式”。
据他估计， 一个优秀的研究生，暂且把他当作一个不需要吃饭、睡觉、洗澡的人类计算机，每天24小时、每周7天都不停地分析Galaxy Zoo的数据，会需要3到5年的时间，才能达到Galaxy Zoo志愿者们在项目头6个月所完成的数据量。
So who are these overachieving zooites? According to a 2008 survey of 11,000 Galaxy Zoo users, 80% are men and two-thirds live in the U.S. or U.K. They are primarily people who want to "contribute to original scientific research," says Jordan Raddick, education director of the Institute for Data-Intensive Engineering and Science at Johns Hopkins University, who helped conduct the survey. For some Galaxy Zoo volunteers, the draw is somewhat more philosophical. Contemplating a galaxy that exists at an almost unimaginable distance, in both space and time, and contributing a bit of knowledge about it can be humbling and satisfying. "Every galaxy has a story to tell. They are beautiful, mysterious, and show how amazing our universe is," says Aida Berges, a homemaker in Puerto Rico who has classified 150,000 galaxies — at one point putting in 16-hour days. "It was love at first sight when I started in Galaxy Zoo ... It is a magical place, and it feels like coming home at last."
(See pictures of five nations' space programs.)
那么，这些勇敢的zooites是谁？ 根据2008年的普查，有11,000名Galaxy Zoo用户，其中80%是男性，2/3居住在美国或英国。 他们是希望为科研初期提供贡献的主要人群， 帮助统计这项普查、来自约翰霍普金斯大学数据密集型工程和科学研究所的教育主任，Jordan Raddick 是这么认为的。
对于一些Galaxy Zoo志愿者来说，引出的倒是写颇具哲学意味的想法。 凝视一个无论在空间还是时间上都遥远得难以想象的星系，贡献一点对它的了解，会是谦逊而愉快的。
Aida Berges，一位居住在波多黎各、分类了15万个星系、有时会全天16小时投入的家庭主妇说：“每一个星系都是在讲述一个故事，它们是美丽的、神秘的，展示出我们的宇宙是多么得迷人。 我开始参与Galaxy Zoo时，第一次就喜欢上了它..... 这是个有魔力的地方，最后会有种回家的感觉。
（查看五个国家的航天计划的图片）
Researchers from other disciplines have begun approaching the Galaxy Zoo team for help sorting their own masses of information. With Galaxy Zoo's assistance, the Royal Observatory Greenwich just launched Solar Stormwatch, which asks volunteers to track solar explosions captured on video by NASA's STEREO spacecraft. The idea is eventually to be able to predict these flare-ups, which interfere with satellites and endanger astronauts. Another project will task volunteers with translating the famous Oxyrhynchus Papyri, a cache of 50,000 Ptolemaic-era manuscript fragments from Egypt. Yet another will analyze footage of the New Caledonian crow in the wild. (It's one of the few nonprimate species to create and even modify tools.)
其它领域的研发人员，已经开始与Galaxy Zoo团队接洽，期望能帮助他们来整理那大量的信息。在Galaxy Zoo的协助下，英国格林威治皇家天文台刚发布了Solar Stormwatch项目，它需要志愿者们从美国国家航空航天局（NASA）的环日立体摄影卫星（STEREO spacecraft）捕捉的视频里跟踪太阳的爆发，从而最终能预测这些干扰卫星、危害宇航员的火焰。另外有个将要发布的项目，要志愿者帮忙翻译著名的俄克喜林库斯古卷（Oxyrhynchus Papyri），一个有5万件埃及托勒密时代手稿残片的宝藏。还有一个项目是分析在野外拍摄的新喀里多尼亚乌鸦的照片（此鸟是为数不多的、能制作甚至修改工具的、非灵长类物种之一）。
Yale astronomy graduate student Carolin Cardamone, who has published research on green pea galaxies, says astronomers were alerted to their existence by Galaxy Zoo volunteers who posted hundreds of images to the site's busy discussion forum. She says the project is an enormous boon to her field. "This is all hard, rigorous science," she says. "We're not giving busywork to do. We're not doing this so they can have fun with science, but so they can participate in real science."
来自耶鲁大学、发布了对“绿色豌豆”星系研究项目的天文学研究生Carolin Cardamone认为，天文学家们已经意识到他们的存在， 那些在繁忙的Galaxy Zoo讨论论坛上贴了数以百计图片的志愿者们给了他们很好的启示； 这个项目对她自己的领域来说是个佳音。 她说：“我们不会给志愿者忙不完的工作。 我们只有不这么做，他们才能从科学中得到乐趣； 也只有这样，他们才能真正参与到实际的科学研究中来。”
See pictures of Saturn.
多幅土星图片
http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2008/saturn/saturn_01.jpg
See the top 50 space moments since Sputnik.
自苏联Sputnik人造卫星发射以来，50个太空飞行器 (文章)
页:
[1]
