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Computer Science Tools Flood Astronomers With Data

Posted by Soulskill on from the time-to-build-the-data-ark dept.

purkinje writes "Astronomy is getting a major data-gathering boost from computer science, as new tools like real-time telescopic observations and digital sky surveys provide astronomers with an unprecedented amount of information — the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, for instance, generates 30 terabytes of data each night. Using informatics and other data-crunching approaches, astronomers — with the help of computer science — may be able to get at some of the biggest, as-yet-unanswerable cosmological questions."

2 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. I gots to nitpick by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    methinks its the sensors that are doing the flooding. Not "computer science tools"

  2. Re:too much? by SoCalChris · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There's no such thing as too much data in a case like this, assuming that they can store it all. Even if it's too much to parse now, it won't be in a few years. Get as much data as we can now, while there's funding for it.