[math-fun] Amateurs find planet with 4 (four) suns!
Allegedly there is a planet in a binary star system, which is actually two binary star systems orbiting each other (4 star system). And it was found by 2 amateur guys named Kian Jek and Robert Gagliano by examining public Kepler data to detect eclipses. Which seems kind of stupid, actually. I mean, it looks like they could have examined all their data by computer to spot planets, but instead built a web site to allow humans to examine the data, which since for 160000 stars is a ton of data. The humans then duly spotted the planet. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/10/15/amateur-planet-hun... http://arxiv.org/pdf/1210.3612.pdf see conclusions page 22
On 10/15/12, Warren Smith <warren.wds@gmail.com> wrote:
[...] Which seems kind of stupid, actually. I mean, it looks like they could have examined all their data by computer to spot planets, but instead built a web site to allow humans to examine the data, which since for 160000 stars is a ton of data. The humans then duly spotted the planet.
The Planet Hunters web site, and other press articles that I saw, explain this quite well. Here is the Planet Hunters answer (it's question #2 in their FAQ): Q. Why do you need citizen scientists, why can't computers do the job? A. Computers are great at many things, but some tasks that are easy for humans are still extremely difficult for a computer. For instance, a small child can effortlessly tell hundreds of human faces apart, while computers still struggle with this seemingly basic task. Humans also have the capacity to recognize if something is odd or unexpected. So when scientists are faced with the task of analyzing complex data, the human brain is often better at sorting through it than a computer. - http://www.planethunters.org/faq#GQ2 -- Robert Munafo -- mrob.com Follow me at: gplus.to/mrob - fb.com/mrob27 - twitter.com/mrob_27 - mrob27.wordpress.com - youtube.com/user/mrob143 - rilybot.blogspot.com
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Robert Munafo -
Warren Smith