Who: Hanny van Arkel (2007)

Profession: Music teacher at a school.

In the 21st century, when the sky is scanned by automatic telescopes worth billions of dollars, it seems impossible to find something new without specialized education. But the Dutch teacher Hanny van Arkel proved otherwise.

In her free time, she participated in the volunteer online project Galaxy Zoo, where anyone could help astronomers sort through photographs of galaxies. While browsing through thousands of boring images, Hanny suddenly noticed a strange green spot with a hole in the middle, unlike any known galaxy. She asked on the forum: "What is this green thing?" The astronomers took a closer look and gasped. It turned out this was not a camera glitch. The teacher had opened a completely new class of astronomical objects — a gigantic gas cloud illuminated by the radiation of a dimmed quasar. The scientists did not take long to come up with a name and officially called the phenomenon Hanny's Voorwerp (from Dutch — "Hanny's Object").

What can we conclude from this? Science is not always about diplomas and statuses. First and foremost, science is curiosity, passion, and the willingness to ask the question 'What if?'. Sometimes, to see the invisible, you just need to look at the world differently than you were taught.