Back in the mid-20th century, astronomers spotted galaxies that looked like they'd been assembled by a cosmic toddler - clumpy, blob-filled, and bursting with newborn stars at an explosive rate. These so-called "clumpy galaxies" were apparently all the rage in the early universe, but have since fallen out of fashion. Why they vanished remains a mystery, because space is great at keeping secrets.
Enter the Euclid space telescope, an ESA mission with NASA's fingerprints all over it. Euclid has started snapping images of millions of galaxies - far more than any team of professional scientists could ever hope to catalog without losing their minds. These high-definition views of clumpy galaxies promise to reveal the structure within and among the clumps, but someone has to actually look at them.
That someone is you. Scientists are building a machine-learning "digital assistant" to handle the data deluge, but it's only partially trained thanks to an earlier project called Galaxy Zoo: Clump Scout. Now, as a volunteer for Galaxy Zoo: Clump Scout II, you'll help teach this algorithm to stop mistaking distant stars or camera glitches for actual cosmic clumps. Your job: gently move squares around, delete the ones that are wrong, or add new ones. It's like playing a very slow, very important game of whack-a-mole with the universe.
All you need is a laptop or smartphone - no astrophysics degree required. In return, you'll help solve the mystery of how giant star-forming nurseries formed, why they disappeared over cosmic time, and how star formation actually works in galaxies. Click the link to become a clump scout. The universe is waiting, and it's not getting any younger.