

Every day almost 1 mln people help astronomers identify galaxies on Galaxy Zoo - ziodave
http://www.galaxyzoo.org/

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ziodave
My curiosity is, what leads people to spend time and effort to analyze
millions of universe pictures to identify stars without any specific reward
(they can't even name new discoveries)?

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nzp
This may sound like a cliche, but the discovery is the reward. Everything else
is just icing on the cake, may make your life more comfortable, may make you
feel appreciated, but it's optional. I mean, your question actually says "why
would anyone do any science?", because have in mind that doing fundamental
science is not that lucrative in terms of pay compared to the value it brings,
and only a vanishingly small percentage of scientists actually get some kind
of a recognition, and of those who do a vanishingly small percentage is even
_mentioned_ to general public.

