Originally posted on sciy.org by Ron Anastasia on Wed 11 Jul 2007 08:17 PM PDT
Public to join search for cosmic 'axis of evil'
"It's make-or-break time for the axis of evil," says cosmologist Kate Land of the University of Oxford - and she wants the public's help to decide its fate.In 2005, Land noticed an unexpected alignment of spots in the cosmic background radiation, which seems to defy the standard model of cosmology. Earlier this year, New Scientist reported that a study of 1660 spiral galaxies suggested the galaxies were oriented along this so-called "axis of evil". Land says, "It's a massive and alarming claim, which if true, forces us to come up with a new framework for cosmology."
Land and her team want the public to help check the claim by visually classifying the orientation of over a million other galaxies in their online Galaxy Zoo project, launched on Wednesday. "We could try to program a computer to do this, but because humans are good at picking out fine details, it turns out it's better to eyeball it," says Land.
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