ColloquiaRobert Pike, The Universe in 10 PBytes

[Donna Brooms]

The Department of Computer Science, University of Chicago is proud to present
                      Rob Pike of Bell Labs on:

                 THE UNIVERSE IN 10 PETABYTES:
                   DATA ARCHIVING FOR THE LSST

Wednesday, April 4 2001, 4:30 pm, in Kent 120
1020 E. 58th Street, Chicago, IL 60637
(Reception at 4 pm at the lobby of Kent Hall)

ABSTRACT OF THE TALK.  The Large-Aperture Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)
is a proposed 8-meter class astronomical telescope that will survey the sky
digitally with unprecedented thoroughness.  In just a few nights' operation,
the LSST will scan the entire observable sky to 24th magnitude with 0.5
arc-second resolution.  The combination of speed and optical grasp addresses
a variety of scientific problems, ranging from identifying asteroids that
might hit the earth to uncovering the distribution of dark matter in the
universe.  Here's the catch: The telescope will produce three terabytes of
compressed data per night, a petabyte per year for each of its projected ten
years of operation. How can we manage this much data to maximize the amount
of science the LSST can do?  This talk will describe the LSST and its
scientific goals, with a focus on how to acquire, ship, archive, process,
and provide public scientific access to the phenomenal amounts of data it
will generate.  The trick is not to limit the ability to answer
unanticipated scientific questions.  Moore's law helps, but even in 2007,
when the telescope may come on line, a petabyte a year will be a lot of
data.

THE SPEAKER.  Rob Pike (http://plan9.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/rob/), well
known for his appearances on “Late Night with David Letterman”, is also a
Member of Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey,
where he has been since 1980, the same year he won the Olympic silver medal
in Archery. In 1981 he wrote the first bitmap window system for Unix
systems, and has since written ten more. With Bart Locanthi he designed the
Blit terminal; with Brian Kernighan he wrote The Unix Programming
Environment and The Practice of Programming. A shuttle mission nearly
launched a gamma-ray telescope he designed. He is a Canadian citizen and has
never written a program that uses cursor addressing.
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Donna R. Brooms 
Computer Science Dept.
Project Assistant 
Ryerson Hall, Room 152
University of Chicago 
1100 E. 58th.St.  60637
                                                  donna at cs.uchicago.edu
                                                     (773) 702-6614
*************                    (773)702-8487-fax 
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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
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