Regardless of startling new developments in AI, human experts will always be needed to identify interstellar dust captured in the Stardust interstellar dust collector. However, AI presents the opportunities to “high-grade” the image data, eliminating unambiguous empty fields of view, thus making the best use of the time of citizen […]
We have revamped the foils search with new data. This set of data is from a new tile not seen before in the Virtual Microscope (VM). These 2,442 images have been picked/chosen from analysis of >400,000 using machine learning (ML). Thus, we believe the odds of you seeing something that […]
With the rise of AI and machine learning tools, are citizen scientists still of value to scientific research? Stardust@home’s Dr. Andrew Westphal says “yes, absolutely!” and has the data to back it up. Enjoy!
For our September 2020 telecon, we get some thoughts from Stardust@home’s Dr. Andrew Westphal on why we’re confident that we are finding interstellar dust. We also chat just a bit about up-and-coming micro spacecraft, and finally, share our reactions on the recent news of possible life on Venus! Enjoy : […]
In August, the Stardust@home team and community were heartbroken to learn of the passing of veteran duster Evelyn Rhodes Smith, who quickly became a valued colleague and friend to many of us from her very first day on the project. We are so very grateful for her many years of […]
For this month’s telecon, we really focus on our dusters’ experience with the new “AI-culled” foils image database and if the searching is any better for them as a result. Plus nerds just catching up ; P Enjoy!
For our June 18, 2020 telecon, we get an update from Stardust@home’s Dr. Andrew Westphal and Zack Gainsforth on the progress of the Machine Learning infused foils search, and how we now plan to apply it to the aerogel search through some very ingenious image manipulation. Plus we all got […]
For our May 2020 telecon, Stardust@home scientist Zack Gainsforth demonstrates and expresses his great satisfaction thus far with our machine learning enhanced Phase 2 search for interstellar particles in foils (i.e., the aluminum foil that surrounded the aerogel compartments in the Stardust collector). Enjoy!
We are excited to announce the rollout of Phase 2 for the Stardust@home foils project. For those of you who are new to the community, NASA flew a spacecraft called Stardust which brought back samples of dust from interstellar space. You may want to read about the origins and purpose […]
For this month’s telecon, Stardust@home’s Zack Gainsforth brings us up to speed on the very promising advances his machine learning-based research has made in the search for interstellar dust, and how our volunteer dusters are still very much needed to finish up the work. Enjoy!
