Classifying

How can I learn to classify?

For a quick reminder, press the 'Tutorial' button just above the question text. For more details, click the Field Guide tab on the far right hand side.

Want to talk? Post your question here and we'll try to help.

How do I know if I'm right?

A few bursts have answers given by our experts - if you classify one of these, we'll tell you what they thought. To help you get started, the first few bursts you see will have expert answers.

As you gain experience, you'll see fewer bursts with expert answers - after all, we need your help on the unknown bursts!

What happens if I submit the wrong answer?

Don't worry - everyone makes mistakes! We ask many people to classify each possible burst, so it's okay if a few are confused. We also have an automated classifier to compare against. Just do your best!

I'm only seeing training data - why?

You've seen all the data from this week - well done! Congratulate yourself and come back next Thursday (usually) for more. Thank you for helping find fast radio bursts!

Science

What are fast radio bursts?

Fast radio bursts are a few millisecond long bursts of radio light that can come from up to halfway across the universe.

What causes fast radio bursts?

We don't really know! They could be from hyper-magnetized neutron stars, neutron stars collapsing into black holes, sparks from cosmic strings, or maybe something else entirely.

Why is there so many human generated signals?

Humans are loud and close! We use really big, sensitive radio telescopes to look for radio signals coming from really far away. Meanwhile, here on Earth, humans are using these same radio frequencies to talk to each other -- and the humans are much closer! To give you an idea, if you put your cellphone on the moon it would be one of the brightest radio sources in the sky, and in reality, cell phones are much closer to our telescopes than that.

Why do we need your help?

Real humans (like you!) are really good at seeing patterns in pictures. We need you to help us find all the real signals from space hidden among a forest of signals generated here on Earth.

Why do bursts from space look like this?

They are thin because they are very quick, only lasting for a few milliseconds. We don't really know why - that's one of the intriguing things about these bursts. Being quick gives us an important clue; the source of the bursts must be much smaller than a galaxy. This is because there's no way to make something really big, like a galaxy, 'flash' so briefly.

They are faint because they have traveled very far - from inside distant galaxies, we think. Just like light from a torch, the radio waves spread out and get fainter as they travel further.

They can have a slight curve because higher frequencies travel through space faster than lower frequencies. The higher frequencies therefore arrive slightly earlier, bending the burst. We try to correct for this before showing you the picture but it's hard to do perfectly.