Argonavis
22-11-2007, 08:06 AM
I have yet to hear where the proposed Square Kilometer Array telescope will be sited, either in WA or Soth Africa, but the back end problems are highlighted here:
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/555
quote: "Consider that, within the next decade, astronomers are expecting to be processing 100,000 terabyte’s every hour at the Square Kilometer Array telescope. That’s 10 million gigabytes. And please don’t ask how long it took to do the math on all of that. "
This is the problem with modern astronomy - data storage and manipulation.
"So CSIRO - Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization--are starting a new research program, entitled ‘Terabyte Science’, which hopes to help science deal with the mass amount of data that will soon be commonplace.
“CSIRO recognizes that, for its science to be internationally competitive, the organization needs to be able to analyze large volumes of complex, even intermittently available, data from a broad range of scientific fields,” says program leader, Dr John Taylor, from CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences.
“This will need major developments in computer infrastructure and computational tools. It involves IT people, mathematicians and statisticians, image technologists, and other specialists from across CSIRO all working together in a very focused way,” he says. "
This is often how science works - one area will prompt developments in another. This is often the "use" of astronomy - it is training PhD's not only in the science of astronomy, but also requires solving cutting edge IT and engineering problems. These can easily flow on to the rest of society.
My High School music teacher put it well when he said that there are no boxes - no isolated islands of knowledge, that all knowledge is interdependent and feeds off each other.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/555
quote: "Consider that, within the next decade, astronomers are expecting to be processing 100,000 terabyte’s every hour at the Square Kilometer Array telescope. That’s 10 million gigabytes. And please don’t ask how long it took to do the math on all of that. "
This is the problem with modern astronomy - data storage and manipulation.
"So CSIRO - Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization--are starting a new research program, entitled ‘Terabyte Science’, which hopes to help science deal with the mass amount of data that will soon be commonplace.
“CSIRO recognizes that, for its science to be internationally competitive, the organization needs to be able to analyze large volumes of complex, even intermittently available, data from a broad range of scientific fields,” says program leader, Dr John Taylor, from CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences.
“This will need major developments in computer infrastructure and computational tools. It involves IT people, mathematicians and statisticians, image technologists, and other specialists from across CSIRO all working together in a very focused way,” he says. "
This is often how science works - one area will prompt developments in another. This is often the "use" of astronomy - it is training PhD's not only in the science of astronomy, but also requires solving cutting edge IT and engineering problems. These can easily flow on to the rest of society.
My High School music teacher put it well when he said that there are no boxes - no isolated islands of knowledge, that all knowledge is interdependent and feeds off each other.