How can you throw a ball as hard as you can and have it come back to you even if it doesn't hit anything there is nothing attached to it and no one else catches or throws it.
In 2011, people playing Foldit, an online puzzle game about protein folding, resolved the structure of an enzyme that causes an Aids-like disease in monkeys. Researchers had been working on the problem for 13 years. The gamers solved it in three weeks.