Human eyes and brains are still way, way better at image recognition than computers. There are many visual tasks that we do swiftly ourselves but that we can't yet get machines to do reliably at all. In January of '06 I blogged about the Stardust @ Home project where you can help identify particles of interplanetary dust and comet-tail debris in a huge library of digital micrographs. Now I've learned from the BBC's Digital Planet podcast about Solar Stormwatch, where you can help forecast coronal mass ejections and other destructive solar activity that humanity needs early warning about. Check it out!
[More blog entries about space, astronomy, sun; rymden, astronomi, solen.]
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Ever since individual personal computers first came on-line in large numbers, they have been utilised as a huge opt-in distributed computing array by projects such as SETI at Home and Folding at Home.
But there are information processing tasks that can be distributed yet are still impossible to…
"That's why I enjoy taking myself out of my own element, my own comfort zone, and hurling myself out into the unknown. Because it's during those scary moments, those unsure steps taken, that I am able to see that I'm like a comet hitting a new atmosphere: suddenly I illuminate magnificently and…
Dear Reader, remember the remote-controlled Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity? How long is it since the last time you thought of them? Spirit landed on Mars four Earth years ago today, Opportunity on 25 January -- and both are still going strong! These machines were originally meant to work for…
Dear Reader, remember the remote-controlled Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity? How long is it since the last time you thought of them? Spirit landed on Mars five Earth years ago today, Opportunity on 25 January -- and both are still going strong! These machines were originally meant to work for…