"If humans can be trained, software can be too"......

I'd think twice about that statement!

Yeah, software could probably be created for Stardust@Home but when we're talking about looking for patterns, nothing beats human eyes. HUMANS are programmed to recognize patterns in just about any old mess (i.e. pictures in the clouds, constellations, satan's face in the WTC explosion, etc).

I stand by my statement. I didn't say it would be easy, but there's no reason it's fundamentally impossible, and I don't think it's that impracticle given their budget and the time they had to do it.

This isn't to say that computers aren't a lot FASTER than humans and could probably flag more potential impact sites in a shorter amount of time, but I bet they'd miss a lot too. Besides, what a great way to get Joe Average directly involved in real research.

I don't know about you but potentially having my name printed in a scientific journal article is pretty durn cool!

But the problem is humans will probably miss a lot too, and determining the systematics of what kinds of things get missed will be next to impossible. With computers, you can do monte carlo simulations on fake data and determine precisely what kinds of things you would miss. With humans, you might insert a few fake ones to see if they get found, but other than moderate completeness statistics, you wouldn't know much about selection effects.

And while I agree the idea has potential to get your average Joe directly involved in science, I think there's better ways to do it... this just seems like exploitation to me.

As for being published in a scientific journal... well, I've found more reliable ways of assuring that.

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Here's an Installation Guide.
Try the Wiki for other questions.

WE HAVE TOUCHDOWN!!!

Stardust landed somwhere in Utah and was later picked up by a helicopter.

It was the fastest man-made object as it soared from the space and entered earth's atmosphere. On January 16, another spaceshuttle will begin it's journey to Pluto and it's moon. Hopefully, by 2015 it will collect samples of Pluto and its moon and will be the first spaceshuttle to study on Pluto.

And I'm new here...

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The "software" to search for the particles that people are talking about would be the first of its kind and would have to be double checked by humans anyway. That's where we come in.

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TEAM
LL

Ya mean, I signed up My Personnal Time, and not that of my computer's?
Ya sure?
Please 'link' me, I missed that.

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