I will Google things, and I will use Wikipedia - but not as the be all and end all. If I find something there I'll follow it up, maybe see if I can get a little experience in an area I'm researching, or something like that. In the summer of 2008 I was writing a novel (which I never finished) about a black hole. I used Wikipedia initially, finding out a few things about black holes, getting an initial background knowledge. Once university had started, however, I sent a message to the physics department at uni to see if anyone could give me a hand with what I was wanting to find out. The result was me being sent a very helpful document of about thirty or so pages in length on quite a few astronomical phenomena, which I will probably use in future.
