True discoverer

This forum is for discussing space science topics related to Stardust@home.

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albutterworth
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Post by albutterworth »

DustTrailFinder, to answer both of your questions

We're planning to make about 20% of the movies calibrations at the start. That may well change if everyone is doing superbly well for example.

About 500 members of the Planetary Society very kindly tested out the VM for us in our 'alpha test' last month. We have also been trialing the project in teachers' workshops, school groups etc. All in all, the total is up to almost 1000 registered users.

I should emphasize that no-one has had advance viewing of any Stardust aerogel movies. Everyone gets exactly the same chance to look at the 'real stuff'.


Anna
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Post by DustTrailFinder »

Anna,

Thanks again. I believe that most of us here just want the dust to be found and analyzed, so that we can know more about our universe. It wouldn't matter one iota to me if some scientists and UCBerkeley students and staff got to look at samples before the volunteers. My intent was to encourage a healthy competition and increase efficiency among the volunteers, not to be petty about who gets credit.

I noted with interest your comments about Genesis in another thread here (not as moderator). You are so right. Many of us were left believing from what was presented in the news media that this project was a failure and that the attempt to capture it during re-entry poorly thought out, rather than the result of a flaw known to exist prior to re-entry.
gcarlsen
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Re: "Discoverer"

Post by gcarlsen »

Once you try our interactive VM for real, you will find you need to click exactly on a track in the image if you see one.

You have to be quite precise about the position, and we can test how well you do by mixing 'calibration movies' (we know the answers) in with the unknown Stardust movies. If you just click near a track in a calibration movie it will be counted as incorrect.
Since not all tracks are straight, what layer will this be based on? Surface? Top? Bottom? Layer being viewed when selection was made(hopefully!!)?
gcarlsen
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Re: "Discoverer"

Post by gcarlsen »

gcarlsen wrote:
Once you try our interactive VM for real, you will find you need to click exactly on a track in the image if you see one.

You have to be quite precise about the position, and we can test how well you do by mixing 'calibration movies' (we know the answers) in with the unknown Stardust movies. If you just click near a track in a calibration movie it will be counted as incorrect.
Since not all tracks are straight, what layer will this be based on? Surface? Top? Bottom? Layer being viewed when selection was made(hopefully!!)?
Is anyone going to respond to this, or are we just assuming that ALL tracks are going to be in a perfect verticle orentation?
99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
albutterworth
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Post by albutterworth »

hi gcarlsen

thanks for your question.


You need only click the position of the track in one frame of the movie to record its coordinates in our database. Even if the track is at an angle, we'll still find it on review of the focus movie (and subsequently looking at the coordinates on the aerogel itself in Houston).

The calibration movies are all just about normal incidence, so clicking on the track in any frame will score correctly. At the moment I don't know the exact tolerances that the database expects, only that the alpha testers didn't have any problems once they got the hang of it. Our VM developer has been at Arecibo doing SETI work for the last 2 weeks, out of range to answer questions about the database coordinate system.


As to what we are expecting for the real dust tracks: the interstellar dust stream entering our solar system comes from one direction, but we don't know in advance what the exact spread of incident angles will be. Tracks made by interplanetary dust particles in the collector can come from any direction.


cheers
Anna
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spk72
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Post by spk72 »

DustTrailFinder wrote:Hi Nikita
I am concerned about the fact that fewer than 200 people seem to show an interest during the first several days available to sign up to the message board out of the 100,000 who pre-signed to participate in the program. Even fewer have shown enough interest to actually post comments. I have to wonder how many of those 100,000 individuals will ultimately assist us in finding trails.

Some of the 100,000 individuals were waiting to get an email informing us that the project had started. I pre registered several months ago and my desire to participate has not waned since. I might add that posting comments has no relevance to level of interest in this project. I didn't even think of cheating until I unfortunatly stumbled into this thread. I find it funny that the ones who insist they don't care about the naming seem to be the ones posting the most comments and thinking of the ways for cheaters to get recognition.
jaco
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Curious

Post by jaco »

I abhor what S@H and other projects have become, a childish competition for credit mongering and cheating the credit system, what started as @home projects have become @work @ITadmin projects 20 machines 50 machines give me a break! people really have computer farms @home. Why? I hope SD@home does not become one such project, but I'm sure people will find a way to manipulate images and so forth. Naming your own stardust particle? That's akin to those commercials to name a star.....hey it's your birthday! I bought you a star, and it's all yours! I for one think it is ridiculous....they should be cataloged in much the same way as stars are SAO, HIP-TYC.

If people cheat they shouldn't be allowed to participate!

And not all of us who post here are trying to think of ways for cheaters to
get recognition....naming stardust? ridiculous
3of4
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Post by 3of4 »

Naming dust particles ridiculous?!?! I think it's rather fun. Considering the fact that having fun participating in a science project is also part of the idea, I think naming the particles fits in perfectly!
And noone is forcing you to name your particle if you should happen to be the first one to find it........
"I don't like it and I'm sorry I had anything to do with it" Schrödinger speaking of quantum mechanics
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Post by Nikita »

I agree 3 of 4. In fact in the thread of what we would name it, we had a little discussion on what a proper name would be. Finally, we all agreed that the Stardust team knew of the risks of naming the dust but decided to allow us to do that so we could have some fun. As we said before, most of us are very serious about the project, but can relax and enjoy it too! And also, all of us want to discover the dust and want to know if we are the first on a film because we don't want to be disappointed. That doesn't mean that we are in it just for the "popularity" of finding one, but the excitement of helping out.
Good luck in "dusting"!
From dust we come
annaz
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Post by annaz »

Hi Everyone,

Just to clarify, the chance of someone randomly clicking, clicking, clicking just so they can get through as many movies as possible AND actually clicking on a track is very minimal that’s it’s next to impossible.

Our goal, as many of you have already stated, is to find stardust, not to hold a contest. The naming right is to help volunteers to be excited and pump up for the project, not necessarily the end-goal of our project. We really don’t have the resources to strictly patrol every single volunteers and we hope that we don’t have to.

We appreciate each and every volunteer who comes to our site and we want the naming rights will be a reward for those who help us. Of course, we realized that the chance of finding a track is very small, so we are also coming up with other ways to appreciate our volunteers.

Anna Z.

P.S. Nikita, we do read the forum and it is quite fun! We love how we can all interact with our volunteers in some way or another, so keep it up =)
MisterSym
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Name

Post by MisterSym »

Seeing that the chances of any one individual actually finding an interstellar dust particle are so remote, we should all understand what a team effort this will really be. We are looking at 1.6 million focus movies. It is estimated that there will be about 40 particles embedded in the Aerogel. The average dedicated surveyor will only look at a few thousand movies. I accept that the chances that I myself will find one are miniscule. However, I still choose to take part in the search. And I know that there are many others out there that feel the same way I do. This is a TEAM effort.

In support of that team effort, I'm willing to make this statement now: if I find a particle (however unlikely it is that it may happen), I am going to let everyone take part in the naming process by allowing all surveyors to propose names, and everyone can vote for the best one.

That's the only way I know how to spell "team".
BisHoP
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Post by BisHoP »

Nice idea MisterSym :idea:
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Post by Nikita »

I agree, but I don't think I could be that generous. I know what I would like to see, and I know that they won't all be named the way I would want them to be. I would be afraid that the majority would choose something that I wouldn't agree with. Call me chicken or selfish, I'm not sure which would be more correct. :)
Good luck finding a particle. If you do, I will enjoy watching what develops!
From dust we come
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Post by PovAddict »

I just got the email saying Stardust will be running soon :o

After reading all this thread, I would like to add my comment. I am against the whole naming thing. I'm usually quite unlucky, so I think my probability of finding a track is very close to 0.

I would really prefer not to participate than to be looking at images and then see how others are "named" for just being lucky and finding a track. I would prefer to participate if people who find a track aren't named in science papers and all that stuff. (Yeah, call that being jealous. Yeah, call that envy, whatever you want)
Maybe a page on the website showing the names of people who find it would be good; but not only the first one to see it, ALL of them. Finding a track is really rare, being the FIRST one to find it would be even more rare! What is this then? You participate and you then chosen randomly for being named? That would be exactly the case! Images are randomly chosen by the server to be shown, and the dust particles are randomly located on the aerogel by the comet...

I think I wanted to add something more, but at 1:39 am I may forget stuff...

--Nicolas
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Post by seahunter »

well i've noticed in the page URL is says "testing" or "real" so I do know when a test frame is being shown. Also after a few hundered you notice the testing movies have an image compression look to them also. there is a slight but visiable background gradient if you look for it on the testing movies.

example URL , see where it says "ondeck_movie_type=testing"
http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ ... rds=?-1,-1
bmendez wrote:The discoverer who gets naming rights will be the first person to identify the particle track.

The way the system will work is actually a little different than what was in the original press releases. Now there is no minimum or maximum number of times a focus movie will be viewed. Instead each movie will receive a score indicating whether it is likely or not likely to contain a particle track. The score each movie receives will be based on the number of times it is flagged as either having or not having a track and will be weighted by each volunteers individual score.

Each volunteer will get a score based on how well they do with "calibration" movies that will be shown to them at random. The calibration movies are movies that we know ahead of time to contain or not contain a track. The volunteer won't know when they are viewing real data or a calibration frame.

This means that a person who simply click, click, clicks through the movies flagging them all as having tracks will end up with a low score and thus how they flag any given movie will have little effect on that movie's score.

We are estimating that each movie will need to be viewed an average of 10 times before it can definitively be declared as either having or not having a track in it. Truth is, we don't know for sure how may times or what the threshold score will be to decide if a movie does or doesn't contain a track until we actually start doing the project.

Folks, this is real science! It's filled with mystery and questions. That's what makes it so fun.

-Bryan
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