UT Austin scientists want you to ‘swipe right or left’ on this app, but it’s not for dating

AUSTIN, Texas – Located 450 miles west of Austin at UT Austin’s Mcdonald Observatory, the Hobby-Eberly Telescope serves as one of the largest optical telescopes in the world.

Launched about 20 years ago, a project called HETDEX, the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment, uses images captured by the telescope to learn more about dark energy, the force causing the universe to expand over time.

“I’m always attracted to these big mysteries…you know, models of where the universe actually came from,” said Karl Gebhardt, professor of astrophysics at UT Austin and principal investigator at HETDEX. “And we have a huge mystery in terms of what the universe is doing looking at how fast it’s expanding.”

The goal of HETDEX is to identify galaxies and make a giant map of the cosmos that goes back 10 billion years to help solve that mystery.

In February 2021, researchers realized they needed outside help. Since its launch, Dark Energy Explorers has utilized more than 10,000 volunteers in 85 countries to identify about a quarter of a million galaxies. However, researchers believe that is about a tenth of the galaxies that they will include on this map, and they are hoping to recruit more volunteers.

For the public, it’s as easy as pulling up a website or downloading an app and swiping through images from the Hobby-Eberly Telescope. Users are taught how to distinguish galaxies from what scientists call “noise.”

“I think that it’s really cool to take some of this high-level science and break it down and get rid of some of the jargon and be able to bring it to the public and have people really understand how exciting the work is that we’re doing,” said Lindsay House, a Ph.D. student studying astronomy at UT Austin and leader of the project.

House processes the data they get from the public and then works with Gebhardt to analyze it.

Even with advancements in technology, Gebhardt said they have found the human eye to be superior to any kind of machine when it comes to identifying galaxies.

“I wrote the initial code, and I worked really hard to get rid of the false positives, and then we also tried AI and machine learning as well and that worked okay,” said Gebhardt. “But there’s something about the human eye, it’s just so good at finding very weak patterns that we still hadn’t been able to train the machine to be able to pick up.” 

Additionally, each galaxy is reviewed by about 15 people to increase accuracy.

Beyond studying how the universe expands, Gebhardt hopes getting people involved in the project will also expand interest in this realm.

“We need more people in science, technology, engineering and math,” said Gebhardt. “We can kind of use this as a gateway drug to get people involved in these fields.”

Data for the project will be taken through the middle of 2024. 

To learn more about HETDEX or get involved with Dark Energy Explorers, click here.