How citizen scientists are helping astrophysicists to find black holes in the galaxy
Black Hole Hunters are volunteer citizen scientists who want to help research the mysteries of black holes.
This project was funded in 2024 by a grant from the University of Southampton’s STFC IAA account. The funding allowed University of Southampton astrophysicists Professor Matt Middleton and Dr Adam McMaster to join forces with Dr Hugh Dickinson from the Open University, to set up the project, and recruit volunteers. Volunteers access web-based training. Their role in this project is to search for tell-tale signals that may reveal the hidden black holes in the galaxy. The project has been running continuously since then. It is so successful that a Post Doctoral Assistant had to be appointed to handle all the data and make sure it could keep going. A page on Zooniverse keeps track and allows new volunteers to join.
Dr Adam McMaster said: “The project has provided a large amount of data, which I am currently using to train machine learning models for the next phase of the search for black holes. The work that has been done so far will allow us to search even larger amounts of data even more quickly. We expect the Zooniverse volunteers to still be a crucial element of the search even after the ML-models launch; and we’re going to set it up so that they work in coordination with the machines. Without the initial round of manual classifications done by our volunteers this new development wouldn’t be possible.”
“New volunteers are still signing up and submitting lots of classifications. Unfortunately, the Zooniverse page doesn’t give us anything in terms of demographics, so we don’t know exactly who or where our volunteers are. But we’ve had interest in people using the project in various languages and it is now available in French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Hindi.”
Madeline-Mai Ward, a PhD student working with Professor Middleton has done some related computer modelling, which is now being used in the next phase of the project. Maddeline is also featured talking about the hunt for black holes with other project members on Black Hole Hunters YouTube channel , where there are some great videos explaining more about black holes.
Since it started the project has grown hugely. There are currently 18,300 Volunteers, who have made 7,198,187 Classifications to date, on 481,052 Subjects of enquiry, and have completed 427,604 of these so far.
If you like physics and want to be someone who keeps track of and helps to discover black holes, go to the website Black Hole Hunters | Zooniverse - People-powered research and get started. All you will need is a smartphone, tablet or other computer, some guidance on how to spot the tell-tale clues, and a bit of time.