Adler Planetarium's Zooniverse people-powered research initiative is set to hit milestone
Zooniverse at the Adler Planetarium allows the everyday person to contribute directly to real scientific research.
Zooniverse was founded by the Adler and the University of Oxford, with the University of Minnesota as a key institutional partner. It is now the world's largest platform for people-powered research.
The Adler's wheelhouse of astronomy and astrophysics is just one of the disciplines in which Zooniverse is involved.
"We connect over 3 million people, including 18,000 Chicagoans, with researchers to analyze data — from classifying galaxies to transcribing historical records to tagging penguins," said Laura Trouille, vice president of science engagement and visualization at the Adler and a lead for Zooniverse. "The goals are to unlock data for research and discovery, and build trust and understanding in how science works."
Trouille explained that researchers alone need help from everyday people given the volume of data that science produces these days.
"Science today generates more data than researchers analyze on their own, and AI is incomplete. So we really need the public's help. Adler Zooniverse helps bridge that gap," she said. "So imagine, for example, looking through hundreds of thousands of measurements of distant stars, and you're trying to find a handful that might reveal a new planet — so that's what you could do on Planet Hunters, one of our projects."
Zooniverse said it is close to reaching 1 billion classifications.
"It's many years in the coming — 1 billion acts of curiosity, or 1 billion meaningful contributions to scientific research from the public," said Trouille. "Every single classification, every single galaxy that's been classified, every penguin that's been tagged, was made by someone who chose to spend their time helping to advance science, and all those contributions together led to so many discoveries, hundreds of scientific publications, and research that simply wouldn't be possible otherwise."
Anyone can participate in or even build a Zooniverse project. Those who wish to start a project can just upload their data to the Zooniverse web platform, choose the task they want volunteers to do, and let everything work from there.
One of the projects in which Zooniverse was involved is the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Once in space, the telescope is expected to provide a better look into space and our understanding of dark energy, and look for exoplanets and planet-forming discs.
In one Zooniverse project related to the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, volunteers will visually inspect and annotate 2D slitless spectroscopic images from the telescope to observe the redshift of millions of galaxies — the main method used for measuring the expansion of the universe.
NASA astrophysicist Dr. Dominic Bedford will host talks on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on Wednesday, June 24, at the Adler. The talks, each eight minutes long, will be held at 6 p.m., 6:30 p.m., 7 p.m., and 7:30 p.m.
Alder staff will also showcase the Zooniverse-related projects involving the telescope at the event.
