The publishers of Make: Magazine have announced that September 2010 is officially “Citizen Science” month. They are looking for citizen scientists to submit their projects, research, and activities to be featured in the magazine.
It also seems that they are interested in developing active collaborations with people who are investing much time in the advancement of citizen science, and they hope to use this outreach to develop exciting new content for their “how-to” project division, Make: Projects.
If you are interested in participating in any way, please email Make: Magazine editor, Gareth Branwyn [ email ] … and also let us know here at Dynamic Patterns Research how you get involved with the magazine!
Many of you who involve yourself in citizen science projects, or personal amateur research might dream of designing dedicated laboratory spaces in ones’ own home or garage. Sort of like the “man cave” (or, “woman cave”!) for the science geek. This luxury might not always be possible due to space requirements, zoning conflicts, or just having too many kid toys to stash in the only non-inhabited room in the house.
Steven Roberts Computing and Biking Across America
Steven K. Roberts of … somewhere in the United States … had his own related complications with personal lab space, and developed a plan to create a new lab that was mobile. Mr. Roberts, who developed some fame after biking 17,000 miles across America between 1983 to 1991 in a digitally tricked-out bicycle, had developed a life-long personal technology skill that gave him the means to design the ultimate solution for the roaming amateur scientist.
In a Make: Magazine four-part series, Mr. Roberts outlines his development of Polaris, a mobile lab space, complete with computers, Ham radio, solar battery power, a long-range Wi-Fi connection to the Internet, and a minimum, yet effective, collection of parts, tools and computing resources.
Starting with an empty utility trailer, Mr. Roberts steps through the process of designing mounting racks, ceilings, lighting, and locking drawer systems. Of course, a personal mobile lab must be tailored to the interests of the individual, so he tries to outline a range of tips and ideas on what he found useful while designing his own perfect lab.
Mobile Lab designed by Steven Roberts; Courtesy Make: Magazine
If you are sitting on the couch just pouting that you have no space to build your own personal lab space, or just don’t want to limit the re-sale value of your home, then Mr. Roberts has the outline of the solution that will make your science cave come true.
After developing your own mobile (or static) lab space, please submit your photos, tips and stories to Dynamic Patterns Research to help others follow their geeky science dreams.
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“Make it anywhere with a mobile lab” :: Make: Magazine, online, 4-part series May – August, 2010 :: [ READ ]
You must be quite familiar with what happens when you toss a pebble into a pond. You might describe the simple event as a massive rotating object splashing into a deformable fluid. Or, you might… not. However, astronomical bodies are like these pebbles sloshing around in a deformable fluid, called space-time, and this interaction, too, can produce those expected waves extending out from where the pebble drops.
So claimed Albert Einstein in 1916 when he hypothesized that the universe is filled with special waves, called gravitational waves, that are the rippling effects from stars, pulsars, and black holes… all of which are the massive pebbles in our little pond of the Universe.
These waves of space-time, however, have never yet been directly observed. So, the phenomena, although it might seem reasonable, remains only a hypothesis. This is where the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, orLIGO, comes into play.
Operated by CalTech and MIT, the LIGO device is a giant interferometer, which uses lasers bouncing off mirrors to try to detect changes in the interference patterns of superimposing waves. In this case, LIGO is looking for interference patterns in gravitational waves. For example, let’s imagine two neutron stars far far away that have been stably orbiting one another for a really long time. One day, they fall into one another and merge into a single massive body. That’s a really big pebble splashing into the space-time pond, and the result might be sinusoidal ripples pouring outward from the collision. Eventually, these ripples–which apparently don’t diminish much as they traverse through space-time–come rolling toward Earth, like a tsunami of space-time.
The waves, then, will pass through the LIGO interferometer detectors, which are zapping laser beams back-and-forth and precisely measuring the intensity and time of travel of the beams, and temporarily alter the local structure (or flow) of space-time thereby altering both the physical and temporal paths taken by the high-precision lasers. The detectors record an unexpected time of travel between laser reflections, and so something must of happened to space-time! (Learn more about how LIGO actually works.)
Now, a whole lot of data comes out of this sort of detector. We’re talking 24/7/365 measurements of precision-timed instruments that are looking for a nearly random event that could occur at any instant in time; at time which would be nearly impossible to predict and prepare for. So, you might image that analyzing a constant stream of dense data such as that from LIGO would require a great deal of computation time and resources.
And, this is where the mighty citizen scientist comes into play. Since 2005, citizen scientists have had the opportunity through Einstein@Home to help process all of this data collected from the LIGO gravitational wave detector in addition to radio signals from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. By simply installing a convenient interface program on the computer, the system quietly cranks through all of the radio data and interferometric information, and looks for signs of astronomical pebbles that might be the source of gravitational waves.
Constructed image of gamma rays from the Vela pulsar, spinning at 11 times per second. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Currently, the Einstein@Home analysis is largely focused on the radio data from Arecibo. The idea with this focus is to first detect interesting pulsar systems that can be later used for directly tuning into for dedicated gravitational wave detection. Pulsars are rather exciting massive astronomical pebbles (dense neutron stars) that have extremely large magnetic fields and actually spin at crazy fast rates. These stars are typically 1 1/2 to 2 times the mass of our sun, but about 60,000 times smaller in size. They spin at high rates thanks to the conservation of angular momentum; the large spinning star shrinks in size, so the spinning speeds up, just like the ice skater pulling in her arms to gain speed (view a demonstration).
As recently as last month, and just published in Science Express (read the abstract), the Einstein@Home team and their participating citizen scientists had their first major discovery. With the analysis from the computers of an American couple, Chris and Helen Colvin, of Ames, Iowa, and a German, Daniel Gebhardt, of Universität Mainz, Musikinformatik, along with the important “ah-ha!” moment from a dedicated graduate student, Benjamin Knispel, a new, and interesting pulsar was discovered.
The pulsar is cleverly named PSR J2007+2722, and is special because it apparently rotates at a whopping 41 times per second, it has an unusually low magnetic field, and it spins alone. Most pulsars discovered to date exist with a companion neutron star orbiting about one another. J2007+2722 likely once had a partner, but it may have escaped or blew up in an unpleasant breakup.
Einstein@Home discovery plot. Left: significance as a function of DM and spin frequency (all E@H results for the discovery beam). Right: the pulse profile at 1.5 GHz (GBT). The bar illustrates the extent of the pulse. Courtesy AEI Hannover.
The discovery was taken from a five minute segment of Arecibo radio data recorded in 2007, but the candidate event was just realized last month after it had made its rounds through the Einstein@Home computer network. Subsequent observations were taken by other observatories, and the candidate pulsar was quickly confirmed. The results having been published in just a little over one month, this discovery is not only an example of a wonderful connection between citizen scientists and professionals, but also demonstrates incredible–and maybe a little rare–efficiency in the science discovery-to-press timeline.
The ultimate goal at this point for the Einstein@Home team is to discover a pulsar orbiting another object with a fast period, say, less than one hour. With this astronomical laboratory tagged, they would be able to closely monitor the system with many observatories at the same time collecting a dense array of information, which could then all be used to test Einstein’s general theory of relativity and his predicted gravitational waves. The second goal is to find a pulsar orbiting a black hole allowing the scientists to explore the unknown space-time directly around the black hole, and thereby having a rather direct look into the mysterious dark pit that defies so much common sense and gives us extreme wonder as to the incredible nature of our Universe.
And, all of these grand adventures probing some of the most fundamental issues of all of physics can be experienced and directly influenced by the citizen scientist. If you would like to participate in basic physics research, simply download the BOINC computing platform, and register (for free) with Einstein@Home. With a little luck, and a lot of background computing time, maybe you, too, can personally contribute the needed resources to discover the next game-changing observation in astrophysics.
“Pulsar Discovery by Global Volunteer Computing” :: arXiv:1008.2172v1 [astro-ph.GA] :: published in Science Express on Aug 12, 2010:: [ READ PRE-PRINT RESEARCH ARTICLE (pdf) ]
Last year, Popular Mechanics featured a great “TOP SEVEN” List of most influential amateur researchers today. The recommendations were provided by Dr. Shawn Carlson, a former Scientific American columnist and the executive director of the Society for Amateur Scientists.
From retired computer programmers to high school educators, the list includes an exciting representation of very real science and engineering that is being accomplished by non-professionals without major funding. There are, of course, thousands of amateur scientists and programs out in the world today–and DPR is working to feature as many as possible–but, this is an inspiring group that should get your citizen science brain electrified.
What so you think of these featured projects? And, what do you think is needed to bring these and other serious amateur work back into the top-of-mind consciousness of the greater scientific community?
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“Inside Amateur Science: The Best in Out-of-Lab Research” :: Popular Mechanics :: June 11, 2009 [ READ THE LIST ]
Back in the day, families in general seemed to do most of the work needed for themselves by themselves, since this was really required if a family was to simply survive the day. Over the past 100 years, the reliance on professionalism across the globe has steadily increased. The advantages to this “outsourcing of life’s primary needs” approach are endless… we have professional farmers that allow our refrigerators to be full with only a trip to the grocery store; we have professional protectors who work efficiently at keeping dangers as far away from our doorstep as possible without us even being aware of those dangers.
There is an already growing popularity of amateur research efforts in astronomy and environmental sciences, and how well they support current professional scientists is becoming more appreciated. David Brin, science fiction author and futurist, discusses how the effectiveness of the amateur is coming back into trend, and even the US Department of Defense is beginning to realize the potential power of millions of citizens with their on-the-spot observational abilities connected with their high-performing computers and imaging devices in their pockets (a.k.a. cell phones) (read more).
Mr. Brin predicts a turning-the-tide of sorts between the professional and amateur, where the deluge of professionals in this world is causing a plateau in progress as there are just so many people who can actually get a job being a professional… should everyone in the neighborhood really try to become a Ph.D. physicist to profess at the local university? The exponential increase in information and scientific data to be processed by the professionals is driving the need for the masses and their interest in science. And, with this growing citizen science interest, the amateur movement will likely become a critical component in the successful advancements in new scientific understanding in the future.
Do you think the role of the amateur will be so important, or should science-at-home be left to the realms of educating our kids and the happy hobbyist?
This weekend marks the launch of the inaugural Open Science Summit conference in Berkeley, CA. The new program intends to be the centralized resource for the continued development in the scientific community of a new “open source” approach to scientific progress. This path toward enlightenment certainly includes a powerful role of the citizen scientist and amateur research making real contributions along with the traditional institutional developments.
The entire conference is being steamed live online at FORA.tv. [ WATCH NOW ]
Speakers and discussion panels have been brought together this weekend, and include professional scientists, hackers, students, and activists to discuss the future of scientific discovery. Primary topics to be covered include synthetic biology, personal genomics, gene patents, open access to data, do-it-yourself biology, bio-security, and the future of open source scientific publishing.
Drew Halley, a graduate student at UC Berkeley and a writer for Singularity Hub, is attending the conference, and will be posting exclusive reviews of each day, so we recommend reading his overviews to learn a great deal about what comes from this exciting new conference. [ READ Mr. Halley’s review of Thursday’s meetings. ]
If you watch any of the proceedings online, let DPR know what you learned. And, we would like to know what you think is important to consider for the future role of the citizen scientist in the progress of scientific understanding.
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“Scenes from the Open Science Summit” :: reason.com :: July 30, 2010 :: [ READ ]
“The Open Science Movement” :: Andrew Zimmerman Jones, Physics Guide About.com :: June 14, 2010 :: [ READ ]
A final recap report of the Open Science Summit from Ronald Bailey “Citizen Science, Microfinanced Research, Patent Trolls, and Pharma Prizes” :: reason.com :: August 3, 2010 :: [ READ ]
