Researchers can accomplish amazing things these days with satellites — they can study clouds and climate, forests and land use change and even bird migrations. But with so much satellite data, it can be hard to match up measurements from the sky above with information about what’s actually on the ground. That’s where citizen scientists […]

When a group of friends met up in the tropical forests of Indonesia, they were expecting to take in the verdant surroundings and hopefully nab a few photos of the colorful butterflies that congregate in the area. That’s what Yi-Kai Tea and his buddies found on the island of Sulawesi, nestled in the midst of […]

Does a dog ever think, in their own way, “That sure looks like a squirrel, but I could be mistaken?”  Throughout history, humans have thought that our ability to reflect on our own thinking — what scientists call metacognition — distinguishes us from other animals. But there’s growing evidence that’s not the case. Researchers have […]

Note: Portions of this article came from a description of Stall Catchers previously written by SciStarter. Across the United States, 5.7 million people are living with Alzheimer’s disease, the seventh leading cause of death in America. But there is still no treatment or cure. Alzheimer’s hits close to home for many of us who have […]

Erin Canter found her way to the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont, in eastern Tennessee, from what she describes as a very “stereotypical science” background: white coat, gloves, sequencing DNA in a lab. But “that didn’t quite do it for me,” she says. After six months spent mostly outdoors living in a tent while […]

Oceans give our world life. Phytoplankton breathe out 70 percent of our oxygen, and the oceans’  currents and other physical properties are responsible for our weather and climate. Scientists have long been keeping tabs on the ocean with vast networks of sensors, satellites and other equipment, in order to understand more about how it works […]

On June 21, 2019, Sonya Richmond and Sean Morton took the first steps on an odyssey that would take them across the second-largest country on Earth. The duo is currently in the middle of a quest to walk the entirety of the Trans Canada Trail, a network of paths that stretches for thousands of miles […]

Last summer, my friend Henry Gargan became obsessed with birds. Everywhere I went with him — on a walk in the park, downtown or even driving in the car — became a birding expedition. The bird on the signpost had to be scoped out. That eerie call — a wood thrush or a hermit thrush? […]

In April 2021, SciStarter, the Network of the National Library of Medicine, the All of Us Research Program, Arizona State University and other partners commemorated the second annual Citizen Science Month. Previously, partners had celebrated Citizen Science Day starting in 2016, but the global community expanded the celebration to a month in 2020. This year’s […]

Gluttonous space tourists from another dimension are creating portals into our world, with the aim of turning Earth into a popular alien theme park, and the InterDimensional Council, or IDC, needs Earth-based citizen scientists to stop them!  Is this the latest conspiracy theory? Nope (at least not yet). It’s the premise behind a new augmented reality (AR) […]