An astrophysicist honors citizen scientists in the age of big data
The Crowd and the CosmosChris LintottOxford Univ., $24.95 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...