Citizen Science and the neverending search for mindless but useful things to do

[firecat]

https://www.zooniverse.org/ is a collection of science projects that lay people can help with. Most of them involve looking at images and marking things on the images. Apparently it's easier for humans to do some tasks of this sort than computers.

One of my favorites is called Radio Galaxy Zoo. You're shown an image that is an overlay of radio signals on an infrared photo of a distant part of the universe. You click the picture to indicate associations between the radio signals and the infrared signals. I find it easy and calming.

http://radio.galaxyzoo.org/

Another easy and calming one involves keeping tabs on penguin populations. Basically you see a photo that may or may not have penguins in it, and if there are penguins, you click them.

http://www.penguinwatch.org/

Comments

[redbird]

So I spent some time last night playing find-the-penguin for science, which was good except it kept me at the computer longer than I'd meant.

[firecat]

Yes, it's kind of addictive...