i r syuns teknishun

You're probably familiar with the various "cycle share" programs which allow a research group to use your spare computer cycles to analyze complex data. I suppose it's nice and all, but it's pretty non-interactive... by which I mean boring. The group behind the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (mercifully referred to as LIGO) has a better idea: they want to use your brain, not just your computer cycles.

Gravity Spy is an online service where they first teach you how to identify glitches (errors) in spectrometer data, then give you a work stream to start helping them do so. The idea is that humans can see subtle variations in patterns and classify them intuitively, while computers struggle with such "fuzzy logic." By lending your animal brain's instincts, you're helping the project's computers learn to make those inferences as well, thus increasing the long term efficiency of the project. However, there are a LOT of glitches to identify, so they're using the ol' mindshare technique to shoulder the workload. If you're interested in being a part-time cosmological technician, put your pocket protector in place and click on the link.

What's that? What are they studying, you ask? Gravity waves. You probably shouldn't think too much about that. Technician, remember?