How the Space Pope is helping to find real exoplanets by playing Eve: Online (2024)

Inside Reykjavik's bustling Harpa exhibition centre, players of Eve Online—an RPG where millions of players explore the depths of space through trade, combat, and propaganda—are being told they can change the world. In other years, attendees of the annual Eve Fanfest convention gather to meet online friends from the other side of the world, forge allegiances, and start in-game wars on the surprisingly rowdy pub-crawl. But this is no ordinary year. This year, Fanfest’s main stage plays host to Kyoto-prize winning scientist, Dr. Michel Mayor.

Famous for discovering the first ever exoplanet in 1995, Dr. Mayor finds himself experiencing another career first at Eve Fanfest. Mayor has swapped his usual audience of astronomy students for gaming's most notoriously devoted community—and, despite some early reservations, they lap up every word. Mayor explains the science behind Project Discovery, a mishmash of clever software and stat-grinding that crowdsources scientific research from players of Eve Online. His talk is not only heard in the busy auditorium, but also by thousands of curious viewers on Twitch. If nothing else, it's a clever piece of scientific outreach.

Like many ideas, Project Discovery began life in a bar, where Hungarian software engineer Attila Szantner posed a question to university researcher Bernard Revaz: what if, instead of just entertaining, video games could make the world a better place? Starting with the concept of citizen science—a research method which uses data gathered by regular citizens—Szantner mused that, as the world's most dedicated workers, gamers would be the ideal candidate for a new breed of scientific research.

Three years later, Szantner and Revaz turned their idea into a piece of software. Dubbed Massively Multiplayer Online Science, or MMOS for short, the software takes real-world scientific data and feeds it directly into games for study. Over the last year, MMOS has been used to turn thousands of Eve players into a well-oiled scientific research team. As a gamer himself, Szantner saw that the stat-grinding so beloved by Eve players would be an invaluable asset to the scientific community.

"Most games already contain elements that are boring, repetitive tasks," says Szantner, "yet we enjoy doing them. This is especially true in Eve. [Eve developer] CCP has been doing this for 14 years. It knows how to keep people engaged and entertained. Straight away we knew that Eve would be the perfect partner."

The first iteration of Project Discovery focused on the Human Protein Atlas, a scientific research program with the goal of exploring the human proteome. Eve players were asked to put aside their conflicts and help scientists understand the role of proteins in the body, as expressed by a cell, tissue, or organism. Transforming existing analysis techniques into a fun exercise, players diligently surveyed images of real-world cells in-game—where scientists had used antibodies to mark proteins—to locate where a particular protein appeared in each cell.

"If the protein is expressed in a cell like in mitochondria—which plays a role in energy production in the cell—then [researchers] know that it’s somehow connected to energy production," explains Szantner. "In instances where there's a problem with [energy production], scientists can then find the corresponding protein."

MMOS was expected to save researchers a few man-hours, but it has already seen players classify more than 28 million images.

"It's huge. We’re now in the process of analysing the data together with the Human Protein Atlas," says Szantner with agrin. "We're actually about to publish the first scientific article on Project Discovery."

The second phase of Project Discovery launches later this month. Taking inspiration from the game's intergalactic setting, researchers are recruiting Eve's space-loving community to discover new planets. Teaming up with both Reykjavik and Geneva Universities, Eve’s latest mini-game tasks players with analysing astronomical data recorded by the now defunct COROT space observatory. Players are provided with the luminosity curves of stars. Identifying a change in a star's brightness nets them an in-game reward while also potentially indicating to scientists that an undiscovered planet has passed in front of the star.

For one well-known Eve player, Mayor's talk on the latest iteration of Project Discovery isn't just an illuminating lecture—it's a surreal coming together of his hobby and his career. Coming face to face with Charles White, an enthusiastic middle-aged man dressed from head to toe in papal gowns, it soon becomes apparent you're in the presence of an Evelegend. Known affectionately as "The Space Pope," White's relative age soon saw him become a valuable dispenser of real-world wisdom to younger players. Yet, while he gained an in-game following thanks to his sage-like advice, it was his day job that really cemented him as a key figure in Eve's universe.

"I work at NASA, in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory," says White with a sly smile.

While Eve remains an avenue of escape, White has found the two sides of his life colliding at full force—and, as you might expect from a NASA employee, he couldn’t be more excited.

"I hope we nail it," he says. "I really hope that Eve gets recognised for the awesome community that it is, and we come out with some real discoveries. In the last Project Discovery, we discovered some new things that scientists didn't know. We haven't been getting the credit that we really should be getting, because how fricking cool is it that a space game does real space science? We have real rocket scientists playing the game." He pauses, looking proudly around the packed conference centre. "For a video game to possibly change the world? It’s incredible."

After introducing The Space Pope to a very confused-looking Michel Mayor, I ask the Swissscientist what his hopes are for Project Discovery.

"Scientists expect that there are ten additional planets yet to be detected that could be embedded in Project Discovery's data," explains Mayor. "These scientists are waiting to receive the same kind of data from at least five players, and then you will have some professional scientists looking at the results to determine whether they've made an important discovery."

We are star stuff

While Mayor is excited to seeEve players making the same discoveries as salaried scientists, the initiative has a more important goal.

"Of course, I hope that new objects will appear from this," Mayor says, "but independently from the success of this experiment, providing such a fun exercise for people is just a fantastic opportunity to do some astronomical outreach."

For Szantner, who continues to work on MMOS and Project Discovery, getting people engaged with astronomy is just as important as the actual data that comes out of it. He hopes that the company can use games to make science fun and relatable again, stopping what he sees as a world that is slowly losing its connection to the field.

"This is especially important now in the post-fact era. If in the long term, we don’t understand what scientists do, then we will get too disconnected from their research," Szantner explains. "If most people don’t understand [scientists'] work, this will be reflected in the amount of financial and political backing that the scientific community gets. It's very, very important that people understand."

It's this mission to make the world care about science again that sees Szantner and his research partner Revaz also looking to other avenues for change. Sensibly, the duo has decided to make the most out of their ties with Geneva University, offering non-Eve-playing students the chance to contribute to Project Discovery, too.

"We’re using the same tech to give the same experience for students on massive open online courses," explains Szantner. "In these courses you're basically watching videos and then you’re asked to do a questionnaire or an assignment, and we said, well why don't we let them work on real science instead, using real data?"

While what Project Discovery has achieved is hugely impressive, the pair's ambitions stretch further. Not content with data from Eve, the duo are hoping to sneak their tech into more mainstream games—and their next partnership is a bit of a doozy.

"It’s looking like it'll be used in [the new] Borderlands," reveals Szantner with a huge grin. "In 2015 I met with Randy Pitchford, and he is a big fan of what we’re doing…it's really humbling."

With the Borderlands franchise having sold over 23 million copies, it's a brilliant opportunity to help fun-loving first-person-shooter players unknowingly engage in a spot of science. Yet with Gearbox’s loot-driven shooter sporting a very different tone and aesthetic to Eve, matching it up with the right research project and implementing it coherently will be more of a challenge.

"If you take Borderlands and compare it to Eve, Eve is a natural fit—it's so easy to connect the dots. In Borderlands, it's going to be a tougher creative challenge, but I'm sure Randy will find the right guys to make it something amazing."

With gamers now gearing up to help astronomers discover new planets, Szantner, Revaz, and CCP have started something truly revolutionary. Armed with the unwavering support of the citizen science community and partnering with gaming franchises that attract huge audiences, the future is looking bright for Project Discovery. As gamers, we always want to find more meaning in our favourite pastime, yet aside from the odd charity drive, it's largely just entertainment for entertainment's sake.

Now, projects like this are harnessing the power of virtual worlds to improve our own. There's even a chance that, as ever more jobs move towards automation through AI and robotics, the likes of Project Discovery will give the post-work society meaning. Your mum was right, video games are a massive time sink—but in the future when you pick up that controller and log on, you might just change the world.

Tom Regan is a London-based freelance writer who regularly contributes to outlets like Engadget, Trusted Reviews, Red Bull, and many others. He has worked in the gaming industry for more than four years and it's just as well—indoor hobbies play nicer with his ginger skin. Find him on Twitter at @grapedosmil.