It seems like finally we will be able to learn everything about the Universe thanks to a system called the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope which will take photos and record everything about the dark matter, Solar System, asteroids, and remote galaxies among others.
“The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope is a proposed ground-based 6.7 meter effective diameter (8.4 meter primary mirror), 10 square-degree-field telescope that will provide digital imaging of faint astronomical objects across the entire sky, night after night,” said Jeff Kantor, LSST data management project manager.
The LSST will work at full potential in 2006 when it will “open a movie-like window on objects that change or move on rapid timescales: exploding supernovae, potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids, and distant Kuiper Belt Objects.”
Here is how the LSST will work:
* the Mountain/Base facility, which does initial data reduction and alert generation on a 25 TFLOPS Linux cluster with 60PB of storage (in year 10 of the survey)
* a 2.5 Gbps network that transfers the data from Chile (where the telescope itself will be based) to the U.S. and within the US
* the Archive Center, which re-reduces the data and produces annual data releases on a 250 TFLOPS Linux cluster and 60PB of storage (in year 10 of the survey)
* the Data Access Centers which provide access to all of the data products as well as 45 TFLOPS and 12 Petabytes of end user available computing and storage.
According to Kantor, the LSST will raise a 150 Petabytes database in its 10-year work. Well, let’s wait for the system to be fully operational and hopefully, we’ll learn the secrets of the Universe.