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发表于 2010-12-24 20:34:00
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Help Scientists Hunt for Exploding Stars
帮助科学家猎取超新星
A new crowdsourced science project uses thousands of human eyes to identify stars in their death throes. The first report shows that armchair astronomers can catch a new supernova just hours after the star explodes.在一项全新的，拥有众多资源的科学计划中，成千上万的人可以用自己的眼睛见证正在忍受临终痛苦的恒星。（该项目的）第一份报告指出，恒星在爆发数小时内信号即可被首席天文学家们所捕获。
“With very little training, people can spot real supernovae candidates,” said astrophysicist Arfon Smith of the University of Oxford. “They’re as good as any professional astronomer would expect to be.” “只需少许的训练，人们就可以标记超新星候选天体，”牛津大学天体物理学教授 Arfan Smith说道。“他们和职业天文学家们所预期的一样出色。”
Supernovas are the bright bursts from exploding stars that have reached the ends of their lives. These dramatic flares can briefly outshine entire galaxies, but their brilliance quickly fades. A supernova appears to Earth-based observers as an unexpectedly bright star that was not so bright the last time you looked. But other objects, like approaching asteroids and variable stars, can trigger false alarms.超新星（现象）是指有演化到生命尽头的恒星所发生的耀眼的爆发现象。这些显著的闪光在短时间内甚至比整个星系还要明亮。对于地面观测者而言，超新星就是不期而至的比原本要亮很多的星。不过，近地小行星和变星也可能会拉响假警报。
Discriminating software can throw out about 90 percent of the fakes. But the last 10 percent had to be sifted through by humans, who, until about a year ago, were “a small but tiring team of [about eight] PhD students” sorting through up to 5,000 images a night, Smith said.分析软件可以剔除大约90%的虚假目标。而最后的10%只能交由人工处理。直到一年前，这项工作还是由8个博士生组成的小组负责完成的。而他们一个晚上最多只能分类5000张图片。Smith说道。
The new project, Galaxy Zoo Supernovae, takes the work to the masses. Galaxy Zoo Supernovae is an offshoot of the citizen science powerhouse Galaxy Zoo, which began asking at-home volunteers to identify galaxy shapes in 2007 and has since branched out to the moon, solar storms and even historical weather data.新的计划：星系动物园之超新星把工作交给了大众。该计划是大众科学动力站星系动物园的一个分支。星系动物园原本是希望待在家里的志愿者们来识别星系的形状（2007年）。之后又拓展到月球、太阳风暴甚至历史气候资料方面。
In the supernova project, amateur enthusiasts look through images from the ongoing Palomar Transient Factory survey to sort the dead stars from the living.在超新星计划中，热情的爱好者们可以通过由PTF（貌似一种天文领域的搜索服务）所提供的照片从恒星中分类出已死亡的那些。
Each participant is shown three images of the same region of the sky: one image that the survey telescope just captured an hour ago, a shot from days or weeks earlier, and an image where the “before” shot has been subtracted out and only the supernova candidate remains.每个参与者将被展示3张图片，图片属于同一片天区：一张由望远镜于1小时前捕获，一张是几天或几周前的图片，最后一张是由新近图片“减去”旧的、只剩下候选天体的图片。
The citizen scientist is then asked a series of three or four questions designed to rule out supernova impostors.随后大众科学家将被询问3-4个问题，以便排除伪超新星。
More than 2,500 volunteers sorted through nearly 14,000 supernova candidates between April and July 2010, Smith and colleagues report in a paper submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Citizen scientists correctly identified 93 percent of the brightening objects, with no false positives.2010年4月至7月期间，超过2500名志愿者为大约14000个超新星候选天体进行了分类，Smith及其同事在一篇发表于《皇家天文学会月刊》（找不到翻译）的论文中提到这一点。大众科学家们正确的识别了93%的明亮天体，且没有明显的错误。
“At the moment, it’s something only humans can do,” Smith said. “People’s brain cycles are really valuable.”“目前，这是少数只有人类能够做到的事，”Smith说道。“人类的脑循环实在是很有价值。”
The crowd of citizen scientists was also faster at classifying the supernova candidates than the small team of professional astronomers had been.此外，比起一小组职业天文学家，一大群大众科学家分类超新星候选天体的速度更快。
“All of our candidates get classified within 20 minutes every day,” Smith said.“每天，所有的候选天体都会在20分钟内完成分类。”Smith说道。
That’s exciting for supernova experts, who want to catch and follow up on explosions as quickly as possible.这令超新星专家们很兴奋，因为他们想尽可能早的捕获并持续关注这些爆发。
“The first few hours or days after a supernova explosion reveal information that is crucial to furthering our understanding of what kinds of stars explode and how the explosions occur,” said supernova expertAlex Filippenko of the University of California, Berkeley. “Imagine studying an adolescent or an adult; it would help to have photographs, videos and audios of that person as a baby.”“超新星爆发后数小时或数天内所展示的信息对于深入了解爆发恒星类型及爆发机制有着重要的作用，”加州大学伯克利分校的超新星专家Alex Filippenko如此说道。“想象一下（我们）研究的是一个青少年或成年人，获得他（她）们幼儿时期的照片，视频和音频将会非常有帮助。”
Ultimately, though, the Galaxy Zoo crew would like to cut out the human middlemen. The team is using the data collected from Galaxy Zoo Supernovae to train the next generation of supernova identification algorithms.最终，星系动物园的工作人员将取消人工环节，技术小组正在利用由星系动物园之超新星项目所收集到的数据测试下一代超新星识别算法。
“It’s a feedback loop: classifications from people can help make algorithms stronger in the future,” Smith said. “I think if we were still running this project in three years time, I would be disappointed.”“这是一个反哺过程：人工识别将为未来更强的算法助力。”Smith说道。“我认为如果3年后我们还在运行这个项目，我会非常失望的。” |
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发表于 2010-12-23 21:11:19