From COSMIC LOG on MSNBC: by Alan Boyle, MSNBC science editor
Second Life residents Desdemona Enfield and Curious George work on a virtual-reality visualization that classifies stars, galaxies and quasars according to their colors, brightness, distance and morphology.
Does the virtual-reality world known as Second Life have anything to offer for real-world scientists? Absolutely — and a trailblazing researcher says the payoffs are sure to increase when the Internet goes 3-D.
“We are really meant to interact in 3-D, with other people and with information,” Caltech physicist George Djorgovski, director of the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics, told me today during an interview in Second Life. “Because this works so well with the human perception system, as soon as there is an easy and ‘good enough’ 3-D approach, people will switch en masse.”
Djorgovski joined Second Life three years ago, and today his avatar (“Curious George”) seems totally comfortable in the world. (I, on the other hand, still walk over chairs, even though I’ve been an occasional Second Lifer for four years.) The Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics presents a series of professional seminars, workshops and popular talks in Second Life, including a couple that I’ve presented. In addition, Djorgovski regularly meets with scientific collaborators in Second Life to work on his real-world research, which focuses on galaxy formation and evolution, quasars, sky surveys and data visualization.
You’ll find plenty of virtual experiments in SploLand, the Second Life science center operated by San Francisco’s Exploratorium. “We’re using it as an extension of our exhibit space, to do things for our online visitors that we can’t do in the real world,” Rob Rothfarb, the Exploratorium’s project director for online engagement, told me today.
article link: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/25/6344843-science-thrives-in-virtual-worlds?gt1=43001
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