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This app lets you help scientists find new black holes

We’re having black hole fun; won’t you come?

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 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. 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.

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