Gravity Spy: Lessons learned and a path forward

Zevin, M. et al. (2024) Gravity Spy: Lessons learned and a path forward. European Physical Journal Plus, 139, 100. (doi: 10.1140/epjp/s13360-023-04795-4)

Abstract

The Gravity Spy project aims to uncover the origins of glitches, transient bursts of noise that hamper analysis of gravitational-wave data. By using both the work of citizen-science volunteers and machine learning algorithms, the Gravity Spy project enables reliable classification of glitches. Citizen science and machine learning are intrinsically coupled within the Gravity Spy framework, with machine learning classifications providing a rapid first-pass classification of the dataset and enabling tiered volunteer training, and volunteer-based classifications verifying the machine classifications, bolstering the machine learning training set and identifying new morphological classes of glitches. These classifications are now routinely used in studies characterizing the performance of the LIGO gravitational-wave detectors. Providing the volunteers with a training framework that teaches them to classify a wide range of glitches, as well as additional tools to aid their investigations of interesting glitches, empowers them to make discoveries of new classes of glitches. This demonstrates that, when giving suitable support, volunteers can go beyond simple classification tasks to identify new features in data at a level comparable to domain experts. The Gravity Spy project is now providing volunteers with more complicated data that includes auxiliary monitors of the detector to identify the root cause of glitches.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: This publication uses data generated via the Zooniverse.org platform, development of which is funded by generous support, including a Global Impact Award from Google, and by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Gravity Spy is partly supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) awards INSPIRE 1547880, IIS-2107334, 2106882, 2106896, 2106865, 2107334 and PHY-1912648. Support for MZ was provided by NASA through the NASA Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF2-51474.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555. ZD is supported by the CIERA Board of Visitors Research Professorship. ZD, VK, SB, and JS acknowledge support from PHY-2207945. YW, VK, SB, and RH were also supported by IIS-2107334. VK is grateful for support from a Guggenheim Fellowship, from CIFAR as a Senior Fellow, and from Northwestern University, including the Daniel I. Linzer Distinguished University Professorship fund. CPLB acknowledges past support from the CIERA Board of Visitors Research Professorship, and current support from Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) grant ST/V005634/1. DD is supported by the NSF as a part of the LIGO Laboratory. SS is supported by NSF Award PHY1764464 to LIGO Laboratory. This material is based upon work supported by NSF’s LIGO Laboratory, a major facility fully funded by the National Science Foundation. This work used computing resources at CIERA funded by NSF grant PHY-1726951, and the computational resources and staff contributions provided for the Quest high performance computing facility at Northwestern University, which is jointly supported by the Office of the Provost, the Office for Research, and Northwestern University Information Technology. The authors are grateful for computational resources provided by the LIGO Laboratory and supported by National Science Foundation Grants PHY-0757058 and PHY-0823459. Data available from two sources: https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.5911226 and https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.5649211.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Berry, Dr Christopher
• Authors: Zevin, M., Jackson, C. B., Doctor, Z., Wu, Y., Østerlund, C., Clifton Johnson, L., Berry, C. P.L., Crowston, K., Coughlin, S. B., Kalogera, V., Banagiri, S., Davis, D., Glanzer, J., Hao, R., Katsaggelos, A. K., Patane, O., Sanchez, J., Smith, J., Soni, S., Trouille, L., Walker, M., Aerith, I., Domainko, W., Baranowski, V.-G., Niklasch, G., and Téglás, B.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Physics and Astronomy
• Research Centre: College of Science and Engineering > School of Physics and Astronomy > Institute for Gravitational Research
• Journal Name: European Physical Journal Plus
• Publisher: Springer
• ISSN: 2190-5444
• ISSN (Online): 2190-5444
• Copyright Holders: Copyright: © The Author(s) 2024
• First Published: First published in European Physical Journal Plus 139: 100
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons licence
• Data DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5911226

Project Code	Award No	Project Name	Principal Investigator	Funder's Name	Funder Ref	Lead Dept
312546		Investigations in Gravitational Radiation	Sheila Rowan	Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)	ST/V005634/1	ENG - Electronics & Nanoscale Engineering