Google developing search engine for uber-telescope
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Project, slated for completion by 2013, is a
3-billion pixel camera/telescope currently being built atop the Cerro Pachon mountain peak in Chile.
When completed, the 8.4-meter Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will generate over 30 terabytes (30,000GB) of multiple color images of visible sky each night, according to
LSST Corp., which oversees the project.
Google will collaborate with LSST to develop a search engine that can process, organize and analyze the voluminous amounts of data coming from the instrument's data streams in real time. The engine will create "movie-like windows" for scientists to view significant space events.
In addition to helping astronomers and scientists, Google and LSST are also working on a parallel viewing system for the general public.
The system would allow people to view things like "exploding supernovae, potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids as small as 100 meters and distant Kuiper Belt Objects," according to LSST.
Now on News.com:
"Google's mission is to take the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. The data from LSST will be an important part of the world's information, and by being involved in the project we hope to make it easier for that data to become accessible and useful,"
William Coughran, Google's vice president of engineering, said in a statement.
Former Google vice president of engineering
Wayne Rosing is now a senior fellow at the University of California, Davis, and works on the LSST project with director J. Anthony Tyson.
The search engine giant joins as one of
19 entities assisting in the project including the
Brookhaven National Laboratory; Columbia University; the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Johns Hopkins University; Stanford University; Princeton University; Pennsylvania State University; University of Arizona; University of California, Davis; University of California, Irvine; and the University of Pennsylvania.
