Google has joined a group of 19 universities and national labs to assist with surveying space and assisting in turning the captured nightly data (images, video) into useful public information - can everyone say: Google Universe!
Google sits in an interesting position to assist efforts like this. The LSST project; which stands for Large Synoptic Survey Telescope; will produce about 30 terabytes of image information every night. Seagate and Hitachi better hurry up with their new drive technology!
Google should be applauded for assisting in projects like this. One of the biggest barriers for undertaking some of these scientific expeditions is how to manage the vast and I mean vast amount of data produced.
Google also recently announced a major partnership with NASA as reported on Joe Duck's blog, link here: http://joeduck.wordpress.com/2006/12/17/nasa-google-space-research-project/
Saturday, January 6, 2007
Google to Help Film Entire Universe
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Space telescope to hunt planets
The French have launched their planet hunter space telescope (Corot) from Kazakhstan. Their quest to monitor 120,000 stars and to find and document planets orbiting those stars.
Until now the smallest planet we have been able to detect is about 5 times the size of earth. The Corot can detect planets as small as twice our size...not perfect but a move in the right direction. Once we have a space telescope that can detect planets of our size and class I think some big things are going to happen.
It truly is only a matter of time now before we determine there is intelligent life on other planets. Given all the insanity on our blue marble I am looking forward to vacationing on a more sane piece of rock!
It is a multi-national effort but the French have taken the lead on getting this done.
This link takes you to the mission guide for the Corot telescope:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6213150.stm
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