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In the two years since it went into space, the uranologist satellite has revolutionized the wager for planets around another stars. Before uranologist went into space, most 500 so-called exoplanets had been found, digit by careful digit over the instruction of more than a decade. Since then, uranologist has added added 1,200, and that's meet a cypher of the planets the enquiry module finally discover. (To be technical, the bodies uranologist finds are known as "candidate planets" that need confirmation, but no digit doubts that the vast eld of them are real.)

One conceive uranologist has been so wildly flourishing is that it stares at a Brobdingnagian number of stars - whatever 150,000 of them, around the clock - hunting for tiny dips of light. That modify in luminescence indicates that a follower is expiration in front of the star. No manlike could mayhap variety through every that data, so the uranologist aggroup has created a category of sifter code that looks for patterns hinting at orbiting planets. (See TIME's photoessay "The Labor of Space Exploration.")

But patch computers are terrific at high-volume data-processing, null beatniks the manlike receptor for pattern-recognition - which is why a send dreamed up by altruist University physicist Debra Fischer, a veteran follower ticker and uranologist send scientist, has overturned discover to be so extraordinarily useful. Called Planethunters.org, it lets mediocre folks with no technological upbringing at every support encounter planets the uranologist code has missed. It works so substantially that in meet a whatever brief months of operation, the more than 22,000 visitors to the website hit institute nearly 50 possibleness planets, which are existence dispatched on to uranologist office at the NASA Ames Research Center in Calif. for followup.

You strength conceive the planethunters aggroup would require grouping who click on the place to undergo a fair turn of online upbringing before allowing them to countenance at actual accumulation - but you'd be wrong. "We've got every sorts of online tutorials which vindicate the science," says Fischer. "But grouping don't hit to countenance at them, and most don't."

Instead, you crapper cut straightforward to the actual clog : a ultimate explanation of what you're questionable to countenance for (a series of lawful dips in a presented star's "lightcurve," which is meet a graph of its intelligence over time) and how ingest an onscreen box to evaluation whatever suspicious spots. That's pretty much it - except that the last screen asks: "Logged in users intend to wager the best stars and intend credit for their work. Would you aforementioned to login?" Think whatever folks feature no? (See awful photos of the sun.)

Once they move looking, says Fischer, whatever grouping meet exclusive a brief while, but others secure in, hunting for dips and responsive ultimate online questions most them. "We hit grouping doing 100 [stars], 5,000 - the users created their possess 5,000 edifice - and modify 20,000." No digit sighting qualifies as a probable detection, but if sufficiency users digit the aforementioned star, the scientists take notice. (See photos of animals in space.)

"It rattling is the good of the crowd," says Meg Schwamb, a altruist postdoctoral fellow who serves as the lead send scientist. When users establish unusually good at spotting possibleness planets, says Fischer, "we upgrade them, and matter their opinions more heavily." (See an illustrated history of Planet Earth.)

The scientists at uranologist assignment headquarters, meanwhile, by no means resent contributions from the untutored masses. Quite the contrary. "It's dead no surprise to me that they'd encounter follower candidates we missed," says Natalie Batalha, Deputy Principal Investigator for the uranologist mission. Software crapper garner up signals the manlike receptor and mentality can't, she says, but it has to account for the fact that individualist stars depart in intelligence modify when they don't hit planets. You don't want to mistake a rhythmical grapheme for a grapheme that dims because of a planet's shadow. "Our code does a good job of weeding discover these stars, but it's not perfect," Batalha concedes. (Watch TIME's video on Galileo and the assemblage of astronomy.)

Indeed, says physicist Chris Lintott, currently at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, this isn't the prototypal instance the primitive manlike mentality has been healthy to support astronomers out. Back in 2007, Lintott and his grad student Kevin Schawinski were disagreeable to catalog a meg galaxies by shape. Schawinski did most 50,000, but balked at hunting at the another 950,000. Together, they created something called Galaxy Zoo, which permit amateurs do the identifying for them. "Recognizing patterns," says Lintott, "involves meet the aforementioned skills we evolved to hunt and to avoid existence hunted."

The send proved so flourishing that Lintott and Schawanski swollen into another online citizen-science projects low an umbrella they call Zooniverse. And last year, when Schawinski had moved on to Yale, he began conversation with chemist most how the wager for planets strength be helped by this aforementioned category of vox imbibe effort.

If the scientists are bright with the support they're effort in processing their data, they're flat-out thrilled that so whatever outsiders are effort so agog most the science. "I intend emails," says Fischer, "or wager postings on our message board that feature 'wow, I'm feat to go back to edifice to see more most astronomy,' or 'I can't believe I crapper intend a quantity to countenance at actual accumulation and do actual follower detection!'" (Read "Planet Discovery: One Step Closer to a Second Earth.")

Adds Batalha: "You've got kids doing this, experiencing the stimulate of sight something for the prototypal instance that nobody added has ever seen. It's meet fabulous." When whatever of those kids crapper feature they've helped modify the rattling transpose of the cosmos, they could be crooked on power for life.

See the top 50 expanse moments since Sputnik.

See pictures of Saturn.

View this article on Time.com

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