Imagine if you could help identify space dust brought back from outside the solar system? It’s possible – and it’s been done – by volunteers in a citizen scientist project called Stardust@Home. The project, managed by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, allows volunteers to use a web-based virtual microscope to interactively scan the tracks of dust collected by NASA’s Stardust mission.

"It would have taken us decades of effort to do it on our own. And so, we started the project called Stardust@Home and this is ongoing. More than 32,000 people now have participated and have collectively searched more than 100 million fields of view."

Project director Andrew Westphal says of the seven interstellar particles identified so far, two were discovered by volunteers.

"We feel very excited that this is an era in which people who are not professional scientists can really participate directly in science projects like this."