Doing science using Google Earth

On March 6^th, the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University announced that they found a giant crater, 31km in diameter, made by a meteorite impact in Egypt's western desert.

Something more interesting happened couple days later after Mr. Emilio González in Spain read this news and asked: No one saw a 31km structure before? He launched Google Earth and found the newly discovered crater in no time. Keeping "flying" above the adjacent regions, he found two suspicious huge ring structures. "Could that be so easy?", he asked. After checking with professional geologists, those rings he found were very likely impact craters as well! Read the amazing story written by González at http://www.astroseti.org/impacts.php.

Crater image from the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University.	Crater image from Google Earth.

Yes, he was very lucky. But what really impressed me is the power of publicly accessible data. Two important factors are:

1. This fortunate discovery could not be done without the freely distributed satellite images.
2. Publicly accessible information might be more effective than traditional tools.

I don't know how much money NSF and NASA have supported the Boston group, but González paid nothing. I am not saying the work of the Boston group is wasted---finding more craters doesn't mean understanding the significance better. Public might be blind. A few days after astroseti.org published the González story, it announced on its website: "Now that everyone seems to be reporting structures... Please don't bother geologists with anything that looks like a circle." I admit there will be temporary problems when a crowd of amateurs involve in Science too much. However, the power of open involvement is more than we could estimate in the long run. Science has to be lead by elites, but it will be more powerful to be driven by the public.