It’s summertime and there’s a pandemic going on. You’re trying to stay home and you’re bored. The kids are bored. You feel like everybody’s just wasting time, and the way the coronavirus cases and deaths are still rising it’s going to be like this for a while. But wait, there’s an exciting way to keep everybody occupied and contribute to actual real science and have fun all at the same time! Consider becoming a citizen scientist for Protect Our Planet From Solar Storms research project and help identify the most complex solar storms to help scientists protect planet Earth.
About Protect Our Planet From Solar Storms
Protect our Planet from Solar Storms is a citizen science project that involves drawing around solar storms, in a similar way to Solar Stormwatch II. Ever since the STEREO spacecraft was launched in 2006, the unique cameras on board were able to capture solar storms in much greater detail than ever before. Some of these storms have very simple structures while others look much more complicated as if they have smashed! Scientists are inviting curious individuals who can help them identify which storms look the most complex, you can help them study their impact and eventually give the people who run our power and communication systems more time to prepare for the disruption to earth.
The sun constantly sends immense eruptions of charged particles and magnetic fields tearing into space at speeds of around a million miles an hour! If an ultimate example of one of these solar storms knocked on the Earth, it could affect electricity grids, satellite navigation, and communication for days, weeks, or even months. We are becoming more dependent on these technologies and their loss could have disastrous outcomes for our way of life.
But you can help! Through Protect our Planet from Solar Storms, you can help our scientists evaluate the threat posed by these eruptions, known as coronal mass ejections, as they move out of the sun. Planet Earth needs you!
How To Get Involved In Protect Our Planet From Solar Storms?
Computers are not very skilled at working out the complexity of these wispy clouds and analyzing many hundreds of thousands of images by hand is extremely time-consuming. Therefore, scientists are seeking your help to choose which solar storms snapped by the NASA spacecraft are most complex or, to put it another way, the most disordered. By doing so you will be engaging yourself in research that could help protect our planet!
To participate in the project, you can visit the home page and simply click on the compare solar storms to start analyzing pairs of images. Moreover, there is a brief tutorial available on that page to help you record the data they require.
The more sets of images you can help them classify, the better they will be able to rank them by their complexity and probe their ability to cause devastation on Earth.
Get Involved Today!
If you do a google search for “Protect Our Planet From Solar Storms” you will find many success stories about the project! The project has something for everyone. Your whole family can team up as a group for a project, or everyone can pick their own, and then you can share your work and experiences at the dinner table, knowing you’ve done some real science and contribute to saving planet earth from destructive coronal mass ejections. And that’s a pretty cool way to spend a summer!
