This app lets you help scientists find new black holes

Scientists from the Dutch Black Hole Consortium are on a mission to find novel black holes. But the task is a monumental one, as the light from the genesis of a black hole fades quickly, so they’re asking ordinary folks to pore over pictures of possible candidates using an app called Black Hole Finder to help them decide where to train their telescopes.

The images are collected by BlackGEM telescopes in Chile that, when a gravitational wave is detected, immediately start scanning the sky for quickly fading light from kilonovas — bright flashes that appear when two neutron stars merge to form a black hole. The light lasts for a week at most, according to the app, making it important to find the most likely candidates quickly. Some things can cause false positives, such as communication satellites or “cosmic-rays impacting on the detector, reflections, or caused by the data processing,” according to Black Hole Finder’s tutorial.

The group uses AI to help with that issue, but “people are much better at identifying patterns than our algorithms,” according to Steven Bloemen, the project manager of the telescopes, in a statement emailed to Space. He added that people using the app are also helping train its algorithms to better “distinguish between real and false sources” and find possible black holes more quickly.

Black Hole Finder, which is developed by Pocket Science, is available for both iOS and Android as well as on the web. The way it works is you’re presented with three stellar photos — a newly taken one, an older reference image of the same spot in the night sky, and a combined picture to show the difference between the two. You’re then asked to decide whether it’s real or bogus, and if you’re unsure, you choose “unknown.”

Participants have opportunities to direct the telescope by requesting follow-ups for transient sources that are under 16 hours old. You’ll need to have identified over 1,000 transients, granting you “Super User” status, before you can request a follow-up. And the app’s intro says participating means you can also get “the opportunity to contribute to scientific publications as a co-author.”