Space Warps

PROJECT

Url:http://spacewarps.org/
Start date:
End date: Still open

TEAM

Official team page:http://spacewarps.org/#/about
Leader: Phil Marshall
Institution: University of Oxford Physics

Contact: http://talk.spacewarps.org/
Main location: University of Oxford

PROJECT DEFINITION

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Subject

Natural sciences > astronomy, astrophysics (space)

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!

Purpose.

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!

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 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, 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, how clumpy it is and how dense it is near the centers of galaxies. Knowing this can provide crucial information about how galaxies evolve.

ABOUT PARTICIPANT TASKS

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Tasks description.

Mark gravitational lenses

Interaction with system objects.

Mark gravitational lenses on photos.

Grey typology	Participation typology	Contribution type:
Computing: NO Thinking: NO Sensing: NO Gaming: NO	Crowdsourcing ☐ Distributed intelligence ☐ Participatory science ☐ Extreme citizen science ☐ Science outreach ☐	Data collection ☐ Data analysis ☐ Data interpretation ☐--------
Gaming
Genre:	Gaming elements:
Interface
Data type to manipulate: pictures	interface enjoyment: cool/attractive Interface usability: easy to use	Member profiles::minimal Member profile elements:

ABOUT GUIDANCE AND FEEDBACK

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Guidance	Feedback on
Tutorial and documentation: YES Training sequence: SOMEWHAT Peer to peer guidance: SOMEWHAT	individual performance: YES collective performance: Somewhat research progress: Somewhat

.

COMMUNITY

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Tools	News & Events
Communication: website, blog, forum Social Network: N/A	Main news site: Frequency of project news updates: N/A Type of events: Frequency of events :
Community description
Community size (volounteers based): Role: Interaction form: Has official community manager(s): N/A Has team work N/A

Other information about community:
Community led additions:

OTHER PROJECT INFORMATION

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Capture d’écran 2013-11-14 à 15.03.54.png Yes [[has completion level::Low]

http://spacewarps.org/#/about

University of Oxford http://talk.spacewarps.org/

Yes astronomy, astrophysics Natural sciences space 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! 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 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, 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, how clumpy it is and how dense it is near the centers of galaxies. Knowing this can provide crucial information about how galaxies evolve.

Space Warps Mark gravitational lenses data analysis, data interpretation

pictures, other: Thinking: no Computing: no Sensing: no Gaming: no

Mark gravitational lenses on photos. cool/attractive easy to use yes N/A weak yes N/A N/A

minimal

N/A website, blog, forum N/A

N/A

N/A

Low

BIBLIOGRAPHY