Stardust@home

[unixronin]

Yup, NASA's Stardust probe is home.  And now NASA wants volunteers to visually scan for interstellar dust impacts in the Stardust Interstellar Dust Collector's aerogel collection medium.  They estimate that the SIDC aerogel, about a tenth of a square meter in size, should have captured around 45 interstellar dust grains; but they also estimate it would take twenty years of continuous scanning to locate them all themselves.  Find a particle, and you get your name as co-author on any paper from Stardust@Home announcing the discovery of that particle.

The first image data is expected to be available for scanning March 1.

Comments

[shadowcat48li.livejournal.com]

I signed up

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

how are we supposed to scan it if we sign up?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I infer from the description you will take a web-based training course, then be sent "focus movies" which will microscopically examine a tiny area of the aerogel at a time, progressively focusing deeper to scan through it. You will then check those "focus movies" frame by frame for tracks indocating the presence of a dust particle.

What I don't quite understand is why this cannot be done automatically.

[bfudlmint.livejournal.com]

How would it be done automatically? Any trace of the grain entering the jel is obscured by the impact with earth.

However if the jel im homogenious then scanning it with different wavelengths of light should narrow the search down. But I assume the brains in NASA have probably already thought of things like that. Anyway I want a particle of dust named after me. It will be my legacy to the ages.

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

i'll pass.

i dunno.