This has been quite a week for amateur scientists. On Thursday, astronomers at Yale University announced that with the help of 40,000 participants in an online project called Planet Hunters launched in December, they have identified two potential Earth-like planets beyond our solar system.
On Wednesday, an amateur astronomer in France spotted NASA’s bus-sized satellite on its way to an anticipated crash landing, and the day before that, gamers on the popular Foldit site solved a vexing problem in AIDS research.
Yale’s online helpers used actual data from NASA’s Kepler mission, which searches for potentially habitable planets in other solar systems.
“This is the first time that the public has used data from a NASA space mission to detect possible planets orbiting other stars,” said Yale astronomer Debra Fischer in a statement for the press.
Fischer was among the Yale researchers who launched the Planet Hunters project in support of the Kepler mission.
The two planets identified by the Planet Hunters had actually been identified previously by the Kepler scientists, but the Kepler team had not found enough evidence to classify them as potentially habitable.
By combing through Kepler’s team data again, several dozen different Planet Hunters found enough information to rescue the two planets from the discard pile.
The Planet Hunters’ two finds will join 1,200 others that the team of scientists on the Kepler mission has already flagged for further analysis.
DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has also dipped its toe in the crowd-source waters, for example with an online game designed to “develop the future of anti-submarine warfare.”
Speaking on the increased availability of government-funded data to the general public, Fischer said:
“It’s only right that this data has been pushed back into the public domain, not just as scientifically digested results, but in a form where the public can actively participate in the hunt. The space program is a national treasure–a monument to America’s curiosity about the Universe. It is such an exciting time to be alive and to see these incredible discoveries being made.”
The Yale team anticipates more discoveries by Planet Hunters as new rounds of data from the Kepler mission become available.
