鈥淚t鈥檚 make-or-break time for the axis of evil,鈥� says cosmologist Kate Land of the University of Oxford 鈥� and she wants the public鈥檚 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 杏吧原创 reported that a study of 1660 spiral galaxies suggested the galaxies were oriented along this so-called 鈥渁xis of evil鈥�. Land says, 鈥淚t鈥檚 a massive and alarming claim, which if true, forces us to come up with a new framework for cosmology.鈥�
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 project, launched on Wednesday. 鈥淲e could try to program a computer to do this, but because humans are good at picking out fine details, it turns out it鈥檚 better to eyeball it,鈥� says Land.
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