Crowdsourcing science

Want to get involved in a real astronomy project? Or contribute to research in marine biology or genetics or climatology? Check out Zooniverse, a clearinghouse for "citizen science" projects that let people around the world participate in scientific research. You can join projects in a variety of scientific areas and contribute a little at a time. The astronomy projects usually consist of classifying objects like galaxies or craters, or looking for specific patterns in images (things which humans are much better at than computers). Check it out -- you might discover something no one's every seen!

http://www.zooniverse.org

Another famous example of citizen science -- in fact, the site that started the trend, way back in 1999 (the Wild West days of the Internet) -- is called SETI@home. This site works a little differently from Zooniverse: you install a small piece of software that runs as a screensaver when your computer is idle. It communicates with the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project in Berkeley, downloads small chunks of data from radio telescopes to your computer, and analyzes them to look for potential signals from alien civilizations. It's admittedly a very long shot that your computer will discover ET, but we'll never know what's out there if we don't look, right?

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/

Have you done any citizen science projects in the past? Know of any other good ones? Plan on trying out any of these? Let us know in the comments! (Use the "Name/URL" option to post under your first name at least, so I know whom to award extra participation points...)