A brief white paper is provided, discussing how the particle acceleration mechanisms taking place within astrophysical sources may mimic or mask signatures of new physics and the role that will be played by next-generation gamma-ray observatories, su
ch as the Cherenkov Telescope Array, in improving our understanding of these phenomena.
We provide a brief overview of the Galaxy Zoo and Zooniverse projects, including a short discussion of the history of, and motivation for, these projects as well as reviewing the science these innovative internet-based citizen science projects have p
roduced so far. We briefly describe the method of applying en-masse human pattern recognition capabilities to complex data in data-intensive research. We also provide a discussion of the lessons learned from developing and running these community--based projects including thoughts on future applications of this methodology. This review is intended to give the reader a quick and simple introduction to the Zooniverse.
