Stampede Galaxy Zoo has recruited 200 000 citizen scientists in its two year history

By James Dacey

Since its launch in 2007, the project known as Galaxy Zoo can only really be described as a roaring success. Its basic premise is that any “citizen scientist” with an internet connection can help professional scientists by classifying images of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

As of April 2009, more than 200,000 volunteers had made more than 100 million galaxy classifications.

In practice the would-be “Zooites” are asked to follow a quick tutorial which describes the basic structures of spirals, ellipticals etc, before they are tested with some extra pictures. Get enough correct answers and they can join.

So what is it that attracts non-specialists to pass their spare time by sitting at a computer and classifying galaxies? This is a question explored by a group of public outreach specialists from the UK and the US, in a new paper on the arXiv preprint server.

22 Zooites volunteered themselves for an interview in which they were asked a series of questions including their impressions of the Galaxy Zoo website, their motivations for participating, and their experiences with and definition of science.

Following a series of analysis and discussions, the research team arrived at 12 motivational categories:

Contribute
Learning
Discovery
Community
Teaching
Beauty
Fun
Vastness
Helping
Zoo
Astronomy
Science

For elaboration on each category, check out the paper — it’s very “social-sciency”, but well worth a look if you’re into this kind of thing.

For more info on the purpose of the Galaxy Zoo, check out this feature written by two of the project’s founders.

The pirate physicist: Jens Seipenbusch, third from left, with other members of the Piratenpartei

By Matin Durrani

It was all smiles for Angela Merkel in Germany’s general election as she won another term as chancellor. Her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU), scooped 239 seats in the Bundestag — enough for Merkel to hold on to power through a new coalition with the pro-business free democrats (FDP). Her former partners, the social democrats (SPD), now face a spell in opposition.

Yes, all very interesting but what’s this got to do with physics? Well, as I’m sure you know, Merkel is one of the few political leaders to be a physicist too.

The 55-year-old Merkel studied physics at Leipzig University, in the former East Germany, between 1973 and 1978, before obtaining a PhD from the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1986 for a thesis entitled “The calculation of speed constants of reactions of simple hydrocarbons”. She is also married to Joachim Sauer, a chemistry professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin.

Merkel’s background in physics is well known, but did you know that another German political leader is a physicist too?

Let’s say hello to Jens Seipenbusch , 40, who is founder and leader of the fringe Piratenpartei (Pirate Party), which was campaigning for increased freedom of speech, copyright reform and less intrusive government surveillance, particularly of the internet.

Seipenbusch studied physics at the University of Münster. He founded the party in 2006, serving as leader until 2007 before taking the top job again earlier this year.

I haven’t been able to find out too much about his physics career, but it appears that he was a research assistant at Münster from 1994 to 1998, having studied physics at the Ruhr University in Bochum from 1987 to 1989. From one website I stumbled upon, it looks like he used to be involved in non-linear and quantum optics.

Sadly for Jens, his party didn’t cross the 5% hurdle that you need to get seats in the Bundestag. The pirates ended up with about 2% of the vote, although they reached the giddy heights of 2.6% in Munich and 3.5% in Tübingen.

But that’s not even the end of the matter. I have been reliably informed by my wife, who is German, that the leader of the left-wing Die Linke (The Left) party, Oskar Lafontaine, is a physicist too. According to his party’s website , he has a master’s degree in physics from the universities of Bonn and Saarbrücken. His party got 76 seats from 11.9% of the vote.

It seems as if the Germans have a thing about physics political leaders.

Who’s who of science and engineering

By Matin Durrani

This will be my last blog entry during my visit to KAUST — Saudi Arabia’s new research university, which opened on Wednesday.

The highlight of yesterday was the inaugural symposium entitled “Sustainability in a changing climate”, which is a key part of KAUST’s mission.

First to speak was George W Bush’s former energy secretary Samuel Bodman, who outlined four priorities for tackling climate change — increased energy efficiency, new-generation nuclear reactors, growing use of renewables and advanced biofuels, and better exploitation of fossil fuels such as clean coal.

Next up was Alec Broers, former president of the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering, who discussed the importance of engineers in sustainability. “Scientists have sounded the alarm. Engineers need to find the solution”; he said. Mind you, he would say that — Broers trained as a physicist at the University of Melbourne before a career in engineering.

Madly perfect?

After words from a couple of other heavyweights — Imperial College rector Sir Roy Anderson and University of Southern California president Steven Sample — on to the stage came Chen Ning Yang, the 87-year-old physicist who shared the 1957 Nobel prize with Tsung-dao Lee.

Remarkably young looking, Yang stressed the importance of basic research, pointing out how quantum theory in the early decades of the 20th century led to semiconductors, which led to transistors, which led to chips — without which computers, TV and the rest of modern life — would not exist.

Yang’s view, widely held, is that basic research leads to applied research in a linear path. Actually, things are a lot more complicated than that, but cosily ensconsed in my leather seat high up in KAUST’s vast auditorium, I kept quiet.

As I stepped out of the symposium into the warm evening air, the angular, university buildings were lit up beautifully and a troupe of singers could be heard singing in the main square where small tables lay with cold drinks. Guests pressed forwards to the music, and there, above the scene, as if by arrangement, was a half-crescent moon, the symbol of Islam. Like KAUST itself, the whole scene seemed madly perfect — and almost too good to be true.

Are the KAUST celebrations getting a bit too sweet?

By Matin Durrani

I mentioned in my two blog entries yesterday that the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia is not exactly short of cash – it has a $10bn endowment from the man himself.

One US physicist said he’d heard that the whole inauguration has cost $80m – flying in thousands of guests (including physics Nobel laureates Gerard ‘t Hooft and Chen Ning Yang) putting them up in the best hotels in Jeddah, and giving them all, myself included, nice little luggage tags with the KAUST logo.

A fair whack must have also gone on the fireworks that concluded the official launch party last night, which were probably enough to have kept most physics departments in business for a few years at least.

The event took place in what was dubbed “the tent” – a temporary structure about two football pitches in size with an exhibition hall, auditorium and vast dining area. Air-conditioned to the hilt, the plastic windows dripped with condensation on the outside. A troupe of drummers lined the stage as we waited for the king’s jet to land.

Once settled in his seat, there followed speeches from the likes of the minister for petroleum and KAUST’s president Choon Fong Shih, and then specially recorded films beamed onto the huge backdrop to the stage. One featured a boy on the sunlit beach, picking up stones – presumably a nod to Newton’s comment about just being like a boy on the shores of discovery – backed by rousingly cheesy music.

With the heads of state of Bahrain, Jordan, Malaysia and elsewhere — not to mention the Duke of York (aka Prince Andrew) — sitting alongside him, the King then mounted the stage, delivering a thankfully short address, which should soon be available here.

The drummers marched off stage right while the king pressed his hand into a weird tablet that shot out a puff of smoke in green-and-white Saudi colours. The back wall of the stage parted – and there, through the windows, was the university and its iconic tower lit up against the night sky

Cue fireworks.

“It’s like Disneyland” muttered one physicist later to me.

Tony Eastham shows off his new facilities

By Matin Durrani

I wrote yesterday about whether the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia will attract researchers to the new venture.

One thing is clear: the facilities are second to none.

Tony Eastham, KAUST’s lab director, greeted me as I stepped off the media bus into the melting heat. First stop was the visualization “cave” — basically a white, walk-in room onto which colour images are beamed by four cinema-quality projectors. Put on a pair of goggles and the cave lets you see images of, say, protein molecules to look for possible binding sites or to view 3D fly-through of archaeological sites. Although such rooms exist elsewhere, this has apparently a better resolution than any other; it can even play sound, should you wish.

As we headed down to the nanotech facilities, Eastham, who used to be based at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, told me that KAUST has a whopping $1.5bn over its first five years for lab equipment. Tasty.

In one of the downstairs labs a total of 10 NMR spectrometers stood sentry, all unused so far. Then it was through a side door and down a corridor with tall doors leading off. Eastham opened one to reveal a state-of-the art electron microscope and then a second and then a third. Each boasted another microscope – five TEMs and five SEMs in all, each barely out of its packaging. Another room had a suite of confocal and Raman microscopes.

And so into the clean rooms – a total of 2000 square metres in all. All spotless so far. “KAUST,” claimed Eastham, “is the most exciting thing happening in academia anywhere in the world.”

Whether all the new toys can be used for anything useful, however, remains to be seen.

By Hamish Johnston

The BBC’s Melvin Bragg can’t get enough of Isaac Newton and the great physicist’s battles with his fellow scientists.

This morning Bragg gathered a cabal of Oxbridge historians to chat about the invention of calculus — which was claimed independently by both Newton and Gottfried Leibniz and the subject of a longstanding feud between the two and their respective supporters.

Describing what Newton and Leibniz had in common, Cambridge’s Simon Schaffer began by saying they both have biscuits named after them. I don’t know which one invented calculus, but I do know which biscuit I would rather have with my afternoon coffee!

Shaffer was joined by Cambridge’s Patricia Fara and Jackie Stedall of the University of Oxford in a lively discussion about the characters of Newton and Leibniz and their contributions to calculus.

So who invented what? I came away with the impression that Newton dreamt up calculus in order to study rates of change with respect to time. Therefore his focus was on what we now call differential calculus. Leibniz, on the other hand, was interested in how space is filled — and therefore his focus was on integral calculus.

The panellists seemed to agree that Leibniz was the first to publish his work — but were quick to point out that in the 17th century this didn’t have the kudos it does today. There is also some evidence that Newton had developed his ideas of calculus long before he published them.

However, when the row broke out over who was first, Newton shouted the loudest and appears to have used his influence within the Royal Society to have himself declared the originator of calculus — at least in England.

You can listen to the programme here