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.