Space Warps
BIBLIOGRAPHY |
Facts about "Space Warps"
Has address | University of Oxford + |
Has citizen science subject area | space + |
Has collective performance feedback | N/A + |
Has community manager | N/A + |
Has community tools | Website +, Blog + and Forum + |
Has completion level | Low + |
Has contact person URL | http://talk.spacewarps.org/ + |
Has data types to manipulate | pictures + |
Has field of science | astronomy + and astrophysics + |
Has individual performance feedback | yes + |
Has interaction with objects | Mark gravitational lenses on photos. + |
Has interface attractivity | cool/attractive + |
Has interface usability | easy to use + |
Has main institution | University of Oxford Physics + |
Has member profiles | minimal + |
Has participant contribution type | data analysis + and data interpretation + |
Has participant task description | Mark gravitational lenses + |
Has peer to peer guidance | N/A + |
Has project access URL | http://spacewarps.org/ + |
Has project description | Massive galaxies warp space-time around themselves, bending light rays so that we can see around them. They're the Universe's own telescopes, but these gravitational lenses are very rare: we need your help to find them! + |
Has project name | Space Warps + |
Has project news updates | N/A + |
Has project purpose | Human beings have a remarkable ability to … Human beings have a remarkable ability to recognise patterns and detect the unusual with only minimal training. With a basic understanding of what the distorted images of galaxies that have passed through a gravitational lens look like, participants in the SpaceWarps project can help discover new examples of this amazing phenomenon, and enable our survey scientists to carry out new investigations of stars and dark matter in the universe. We will be doing two types of lens search. In our blind searches, we’ll be asking volunteers to spot signs of gravitational lensing in images of the sky taken as part of the CFHT (Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope) legacy survey. This survey has been searched by computers, but we’re pretty sure they didn’t catch all the lenses to be found! These results will help us re-train the computers to do better on larger surveys in future. Then, in our targeted searches, in other upcoming sky surveys, we’ll be showing participants galaxies and groups of galaxies that our computers have selected as possibly being gravitational lenses. The task will then be to assess whether or not they actually are! In both cases, there will be confusing objects around - the challenge is to come up with the most plausible explanation for what is going on, in collaboration with the rest of the SpaceWarps community. Do you think you can spot outer space being warped? We do! can spot outer space being warped? We do! + |
Has research progress feedback | N/A + |
Has research question | Einstein's theory of gravity +, General Relativity +, made a remarkable prediction. Massive objects +, such as stars +, would bend the space around them such that passing light rays follow curved paths. Evidence for this revolutionary theory was first obtained by Arthur Eddington in 1919 +, when during a solar eclipse he observed that stars near the edge of the Sun appeared to be slightly out of position. The Sun was behaving like the lens in a magnifying glass and bending the light from the background stars!
In 1937 +, Fritz Zwicky realized that massive galaxies (which can contain anywhere from ten million to a hundred trillion stars) or clusters of galaxies could be used to magnify distant galaxies that conventional telescopes couldn’t detect. As you can see +, not unlike a conventional magnifying glass +, these gravitational lenses not only magnify and focus the light of the distant background galaxies but they can +, and mostly do +, distort them as well. When one of these gravitational lenses happens to sit right in front of a background galaxy +, the magnification factor can be up to x10 or even more +, giving us a zoomed-in view of the distant universe +, just at that particular point. Lenses can help us investigate young galaxies more than halfway across the universe +, as they formed stars and started to take o …as they formed stars and started to take on the familiar shapes we see nearby.
Observations of the distorted background galaxy can also give us useful information about the object that is behaving as a gravitational lens. The separation and distortion of the lensed images can tell astronomers how much mass there is in the object omers how much mass there is in the object +, and how it is arranged. It’s one of the few ways we have of mapping out where the dark matter in the universe is + and how clumpy it is and how dense it is near the centers of galaxies. Knowing this can provide crucial information about how galaxies evolve. + |
Has screenshot | Capture d’écran 2013-11-14 à 15.03.54.png + |
Has social software sites | N/A + |
Has subject area | Natural sciences + |
Has team leader | Phil Marshall + |
Has team link | http://spacewarps.org/#/about + |
Has team work | N/A + |
Has training sequence | weak + |
Has tutorials and documentation | yes + |
Has volonteer computing | no + |
Has volonteer gaming | no + |
Has volonteer sensing | no + |
Has volonteer thinking | no + |
Is open | true + |
Last edition | November 14, 2013 + |