Galaxy Zoo finds people are messed up, not cosmos

[nagualdesign]

@TheBadAstronomer As I understand it, most of the rotational and orbital motions in our solar system are in an direct (Eastward) direction, and that all of the planets except Venus and Uranus rotate in a direct direction, but I was wondering; what about the rotations/revolutions of all the moons?

May I suggest that you make a video about direct/retrograde motions, revolutions and rotations, and perhaps explain to us what this implies about the formation of the solar system.

..Nice vid, btw. :)

[nagualdesign]

To those (Pratchett fans?) who prefer the term 'widdershins';

Widdershins doesn't actually mean anti-clockwise (or counter-clockwise), it means opposite to the direction of rotation. When talking about clocks widdershins = anti-clockwise, but when talking about things that rotate in an anti-clockwise direction widdershins = clockwise.

Still, what a lovely word, eh? :)

[Century25]

The 'galaxy zoo' part of the so-called 'citizen science initiative', is a very dirty trick against TRUE SCIENCE..!!! Scientists DO NOT WANT OR NEED a bunch of uneducated, untrained - well meaning, perhaps, but worse than worthless - people, totally polluting the hard science (that WE NEED..!) - with myths, mythical lore, and terminology that is worse than useless.

The reason behind this junk ? Bible thumping dark-agers..!! The WAR against science.. NEVER EVER ENDS..! Don't ever forget it.

[Spectre426]

@Century25 What in the hell are you talking about? Have you even heard of this project before now? Obviously not.

[DeanFirefly]

Galaxy zoo has grown into 5 different sites now. As well as classifying galaxies you can hunt supernovae, cosmic mergers, classify the moon and my favourite Solar Stormwatch where you watch for CMEs. All great fun and real science of benefit to us all. (zooniverse instead of galaxyzoo is the address for the 5 sites)

[pjholl]

A guy I went to Uni with went to school with Chris Lintott, he went to almost one of the top 10 schools in the UK...git.

[oleedee]

depends wether the photo is from obove or below a gallaxy to show it anti or clockwise.....

[xjaskix]

ahh i love Galaxy Zoo. best thing ever on the internet :)

[RNLAFDonkey]

is there a difference between people on the northern and southern hemisphere?

like water that drains away......

[stevebritgimp]

It appears there is at least one galaxy that rotates in both directions - its inner parts rotate in the opposite direction to its outer clouds - possibly due to two galaxies merging.

[wvb93]

why would they care if a galaxy is spinning clockwise or counter clockwise? wouldnt it be the opposite from the other side??

[madgestar]

OOoh Phil and Chris TOGETHER! my two favourite astronomers on the planet! COOL!

[Salladsdressing]

Smart idea!

[TheMathGuy]

Fascinating! I wonder why the human brain would be more likely to classify something as counterclockwise. Of course the direction of spin of a galaxy is not an absolute, but depends on which side of it you are looking at it from.

[wikedminx]

I love Dr. Chris Lintott

[JamesTCA]

Odd...

[IRONMANAustralia]

"Our fault lies not in our stars, but in ourselves". LOL.

Now why do I get the feeling that particular Shakespeare quote is popular in astronomy circles?

And since I'm on the subject, here's another one I always wondered about from Henry V, (Act III Scene vii)...

[IRONMANAustralia]

DAUPHIN: My Lord Constable, the armour that I saw in your tent tonight, are those stars or suns upon it?

CONSTABLE: Stars, my lord.

DAUPHIN: Some of them will fall to-morrow, I hope.

Q&BA question: Poetic licence aside, can Shakespeare be forgiven for his bad astronomy? Should he, and/or his characters have known that the sun was just another star in their time? When did we, (humans), figure that one out exactly?

[sneakerset]

Oh,apparently it does exist..and on a scale ranging from sub-atomic to planet-size.

[Elaina43]

Great Shakespeare quote thrown in there - very apt. Really interesting vid. Thanks for posting!

[sneakerset]

Fascinating stuff..Didn't Rand Corp. do intensive studies on "group perceptions" and work out the algorithms for the anomalies years back? Could it be that counter-spiral galaxies are adding to dark matter generation? (of course i've no idea where dark matter comes from..does it even exist?)

[BudhagRizzo]

I'm going out on a limb here -- but how is there a "clock-wise" and a "counter clock-wise" in space? Is it relative to something, or from our solar systems perspective that determines this?

[negativeheatcapacity]

Relative to us, of course. Spiral galaxies are flat disks that spin as a whole. So when we see them face-on, they appear to spin either clockwise or counter-clockwise from our vantage point.

[BudhagRizzo]

Thanks for clearing that up. I wasn't too sure at first.

[h8uall66]

So Kent Hovind WAS right! Oh wait, he just explained it. Never mind.

[TheEyesOfNye]

it's so addicting!!! I always tell myself ok just one more, and then when another one pops up I have to do it too!

[HowardFair]

This would have been a neat way to do a visual perception study... but now I'm concerned. Isn't the fact that he is talking about this now going to skew his results? If there is a factor  by which people prefer to see widdershins than clockwise, it is now useless because you don't know which classifiers have seen this news or not... I'm sure I'll use G-Z differently now, even if it's by trying hard not to!

[HowardFair]

G-Z is fun! It is very meditative, and a great thing to be part of! BTW, my vote is for widdershins...

[KameWaOni]

sorry our bad, anti-clockwise just semmed so appealing.

[TrueNorth15]

well that is comforting to know

[macronencer]

I say "widdershins" because I like being different...

[CousinoMacul]

That's quite anti-intuitive.  :-)

[bigjohn756]

What I found was that with a lot of the images which appeared to be spiral it was very iffy to determine the direction of rotation. They were just too ill defined. In a few I thought I could just barely tell and selected accordingly. Most I simply clicked the "I dunno for sure" button. I probably used that selection most of all. As a result I felt kind of useless and, so, I only did about 810 galaxies total.

[CrashGames2108]

That's interesting. Would like to know more about that phenomenon.