7 Ways No Man’s Sky Gives Us A Science Boner

3. It’s A Lot Like Crowd Sourcing Scientific Data

Oof. Nothing quite gets the blood up like "crowd sourcing scientific data" does it? Naughty.

Anyway, anyone with even half an eye on the search for exoplanets (which should be everyone), will probably be aware of the Planet Hunters initiative in all its many iterations. This is a project in which NASA upload the simply vast quantities of data from their planet-hunting telescope, Kepler, for the general public to sift through, with the hope of discovering an entirely new alien planet.

These volunteers are on the lookout for distinctive transit-like patterns, which is the dip in brightness caused by a distant exoplanet passing in front of its parent star and have so far not only discovered exoplanets, but stellar flares, binary star eclipses and multi-planetary systems. Many hands make light work of the universe.

This was pretty much the first thing to spring to mind after hearing about NMS - the idea that, in a vast universe, there is always the potential for anyone to make a new discovery and carve out a little bit of the universe that is their own.