[eru]

Back a few hundred years ago you could discover a new element just by boiling your own urine. (Specifically, that's how phosphorus was discovered.)

Nowadays you need intercontinental collaboration between research labs.

And that's not _just_ because of the bureaucrats.

[aeonik]

There's still a lot of science to be done at home.

Analyzing data sets and producing good data are bottlenecks.

It's usually less fundamental and more related to recording and analyzing properties of the world though.

You can crunch numbers that CERN and MAST provide.

https://archive.stsci.edu/ https://opendata.cern.ch/

I've gotten into 3D printing, and load and temperature data of different filaments is always appreciated.

Mixing materials together, microscopic images, etc...

I get a lot of value from YouTubers who simple follow a consistent methodology of endurance or break testing products or materials. Tear downs and documentation of internals, performance statistics, etc...

Channels like CNCKitchen or ProjectFarm are excellent citizen scientists for example.

[eru]

Yes, you can do some of that.

But a lot of low hanging fruit has been picked. (And that's good, that's how progress works.

Compare to how saving an additional life in the US is a lot more expensive than saving one in South Sudan. That's because people in the US have (approximately) already saved all the lives they can save for cheap.)