Search for Space Warps! Armchair Astronomers Can Now Scout the Universe

It's not just NASA scientists that are discovering new space warps and stars. Now you too can get involved in finding galaxies and brown dwarfs. The Space Warps project is recruiting armchair astronomers to scout the universe for massive galaxies that are so large that they warp space time.

This warping is known as a gravitational lens. It occurs when galaxies bend light rays that pass near them, like a lens. Extremely rare, these cosmic phenomena may prove extremely valuable when trying to understand our universe. They could potentially answer questions about dark matter, a mysterious material that helps bind galaxies and galaxy clusters together.

"Not only do space warps act like lenses, magnifying the distant galaxies behind them, but we can also use the light they distort to weigh them, helping us to figure out how much dark matter they contain and how it's distributed," said Phil Marshall, one of the leaders of Space Warps' research team, in an interview with NBC News. "Gravitational lenses help us to answer all kinds of questions about galaxies, including how many very low-mass stars such as brown dwarfs--which aren't bright enough to detect directly in many observations--are lurking in distant galaxies."

Yet in order to find these gravitational lenses, scientists have to sift through images: lots and lots of images. Because of this, they're giving the public the chance to help out. The Space Warps website gives users a short tutorial before allowing them to examine images from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) legacy survey and find gravitational lenses.

Not all of the gravitational lenses will actually be real, though. Scientists have simulated the phenomenon in some of the images in order to keep users sharp as they search. The first time they spot one, the program will congratulate them.

Yet actually spotting a real lens will be harder than you might expect. The chances of finding one are small--only about one in a thousand giant galaxies are aligned with a background object in such a way that the light form the object becomes curved and focused, according to Forbes. Even so, the time spent by users will make it worth it for scientists.

"Even if individual visitors only spend a few minutes glancing over 40 or so images each ,that's really helpful to our research--we only need a handful of people to spot something in an image for us to say that it's worth investigating," said Aprajita Verma, one of Space Warps' principal investigators, in a statement.

Want to get in on the action? You can try to find gravitational lenses by checking out the website here. Happy hunting!