Nasa needs your help finding Stardust

The Stardust@home project was announced Tuesday 01/10/06. Nasa Stardust researchers in conjunction with the University of Berkely ask for help from internet volunteers in a project broadly similar to SETI@home.

Stardust launched on 02/07/1999 to collect interstellar dust, and dust from the tail of a comet. Researchers estimate that it may have only collected 12 to 45 grains of space dust.

Finding these microscopic specs of dust will take approximately 30,000 man hours to examine the 1.5 million images that will be scanned once the capsule lands on Sunday, 01/15/06.

Thats where Stardust@home comes into play. Stardust@home recruits will go thru a web based training session, then download a digital microsope. Recruits will examine as many of the images as possible with the virtual microscope on their home pc.

In recognition of the critical importance of the Stardust@home volunteers, the discoverer of an interstellar dust particle will appear as a co-author on any scientific paper by the Stardust@home collaboration announcing the discovery of the particle.

How cool is that?

Shhh! Don't tell everyone.

It'll ruin our chances of finding a particle

Of course I'm just fooling around, doesn't matter how many people are invovled it's going to be pretty rare to find a speck of dust. The people who end up finding one are either extremely lucky or extremely devoted.

what the heck is the point of finding star dust? its not like you can really do an indepth study on dust. intresting though.

The preliminary reports from the Stardust mission are in.

Mg-rich silicates, such as pyroxene (MgSiO3; Px) are intermixed with amorphous silicates (Am) and nanoscale Fe-Ni sulfides
www.eurekalert.org...

Related Articles:
NASA Study Finds New Kind of Organics in Stardust Mission

Stardust Findings Suggest Comets More Complex Than Thought

LATEST STARDUST SCIENCE RESULTS



[edit on 12/24/06 by makeitso]