What's the next window into our universe?

Big Data is everywhere — even the skies. In an informative talk, astronomer Andrew Connolly shows how large amounts of data are being collected about our universe, recording it in its ever-changing moods. Just how do scientists capture so many images at scale? It starts with a giant telescope …

  • Big data: There's a difference between more data being better and more data being different, and therefore capable of changing the questions we want to ask.
  • 01:40
    New tools: Technologies that open a new window into our universe, that of time.
  • 02:00
    Dark energy: What is this mysterious dark energy that drives expansion of our universe?
  • 03:00
    Supernovae: The pulsations that you see are supernovae.
  • 03:40
    Asteroids: The swarm of objects you see moving across the sky are asteroids.
  • 05:25
    Camera: How do you capture an image of this size? You build the largest digital camera in history.
  • 07:00
    Data management: The software is as critical to the science as the telescope and camera we've built.
  • 08:10
    Solar system formation: Studying the asteroids is like performing forensics on our solar system.
  • 08:45
    Earth defense: These are the asteroids that may one day impact the Earth.
  • 09:22
    Asteroid video: Every point that you see in this visualization is a real asteroid. Video from Alex Parker atUC Berkeley.
  • 10:55
    Large scale structure video: The idea of looking back in time has revolutionized our ideas about the universe. Video from Mark SubbaRao at the Adler Planetarium.