Stardust@home Options

[Rakhir]

I don't found any post about Stardust@Home so I created a new thread.

Stardust@Home is a distributed search by volunteers for interstellar dust in the Stardust interstellar dust collector.

Volunteers have to pre-register for an expected start in spring of 2006. You will also have to pass a test to be qualified for the search.
Indeed, unlike the distributed computer projects running in background tasks, this project is using your eyes to scan "focus movies" thanks to a Virtual Microscope.

According to estimations, there should be about 45 interstellar dust impacts in the collector.

Besides the satisfaction of contributing actively to this sample return project, your name will appear as a co-author on the paper announcing the discovery of the particle.

http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/

Rakhir

[deglr6328]

Looks fun. What do they mean though when they say "Not even one contemporary interstellar dust grain has ever been studied in the laboratory"? Were old grains found somewhere?

[hendric]

http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/April00/analyzingSmall.html

has some good information. I think what they mean by contemporary is "recent". Grains studied so far have been from meteorites etc, dating back to the birth of the solar system.

[Ames]

Pre-registered and ready for action.

I think this is an excellent opportunity for UMSF members to actively participate in a research project. Ok it is a monotonous search for a tiny mote of dust, but much science is just like that, and just think how you will feel if you are one of those who found one of the 45.

Nick

[akuo]

Is there some sort of explanation from the Stardust team why this detection cannot be done by a computer program scanning the images? Are the marks left by interstellar dust so unpredictable that human work is needed? How does the person know what to look for then?

I'd imagine that the trail would just be longer because of higher velocity of interstellar particles, so it seems strange that this couldn't be detected by a machine.

Anyhow, I already signed for the job anyway :-)

[djellison]

It's probably cheaper to get people to do it than write some software to do it Especialyl when the people are a) free and plentiful

There's going to be some 'training' images before you're allowed to do real ones as I understand it, to make sure you know what you're doing

It reminds me of the Mars crater counting on 'clickworkers'

Doug

[paxdan]

stardust@home

please be mac compatible please be mac compatible please be mac compatible please be mac compatible please be mac compatible please be mac compatible

that is all.

[elakdawalla]

It's probably cheaper to get people to do it than write some software to do it   Especialyl when the people are a) free and plentiful

There's going to be some 'training' images before you're allowed to do real ones as I understand it, to make sure you know what you're doing

It reminds me of the Mars crater counting on 'clickworkers'

Yes, it's something like clickworkers. I beta-tested their training materials and it is tedious but I could get hooked anyway and I think it is a Web browser-based Java application, so it should be platform-independent, provided you've got Java working properly on your machine. We're collaborating on the project, mostly to try to help them get the word out to people. They'll have an awful lot of images to look at!

--Emily

[djellison]

I did WAYYYyy too much crater clicking...it was strangely addictive.

I'm guessing the 'movies' refered to in that TPS article are a pull of focus thru the gel?
Doug

[odave]

...I think it is a Web browser-based Java application

Do you know if your connection speed will have an impact on performance?

Since I really doubt my company would pay for my time & bandwidth doing stardust@home (silly, I know, but they do keep going on about profit and such), I'll be doing it from my dialup access at home.

This could be the straw that breaks the camel's back for my getting broadband at home, though...just need a way to get it through the Household Purchasing Department

[elakdawalla]

I'm guessing the 'movies' refered to in that TPS article are a pull of focus thru the gel?

Yup. You catch the dust particle paths because they are beneath the surface, not on the surface, so they pop into focus when everything on the surface is blurry. I think that the "movies" are really just stacks of a couple dozen individual JPG images, which you can click forward and backward through, and they're not very high resolution, I think maybe only 400 or 500 pixels wide. So it should be possible (though not speedy) to work on this through a dialup.

--Emily

[The Messenger]

Is there some sort of explanation from the Stardust team why this detection cannot be done by a computer program scanning the images? Are the marks left by interstellar dust so unpredictable that human work is needed? How does the person know what to look for then?

I'd imagine that the trail would just be longer because of higher velocity of interstellar particles, so it seems strange that this couldn't be detected by a machine.

Anyhow, I already signed for the job anyway :-)

It is extremely difficult to train a computer to recognize and discriminate fringe events - 1 to eight pixels. While the human eye can quickly discern a pattern of shadows (due to variation in light, or slight density changes in the medium), a computer will often identify these as false positives.

Another problem is patterns in a neutral medium that are periodic but slightly asymetric. These are flagged as contaminants by virtually any pattern recognition software. I can eyeball a slice of Swiss cheese, and easily tell if a hole formed naturally, or if it was left by a core sampler. A computer would have fits trying to tell the difference.

There is a good probability that all of the images will be prescreen by computer, and only images with possible inclusions will be distributed to image evaluators.

(FWIW, I have written neuro-network-like routines that are used to evaluate rocket motor propellant grains for many programs...fun stuff, and if the medium is right, I might be able to turn them loose on Stardust.)

[ElkGroveDan]

stardust@home

please be mac compatible please be mac compatible please be mac compatible please be mac compatible please be mac compatible please be mac compatible

that is all.

They have audio tape explaining how to convert the program for your mac. It's an 8-track.

[dvandorn]

I registered with Stardust@home as soon as its existence was revealed on the forum, here. I've yet to hear anything at all back from them.

Has anyone heard from them? Or did they only take the first couple of thousand applications, and I'm SOL?

-the other Doug

[Rakhir]

I registered with Stardust@home as soon as its existence was revealed on the forum, here.  I've yet to hear anything at all back from them.

Has anyone heard from them?  Or did they only take the first couple of thousand applications, and I'm SOL?

-the other Doug

I also registred the same day I created this thread but received no news from them.

Rakhir