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The Vera Rubin Observatory. What's up
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with that?
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The first images from a new observatory
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have been released. This is video
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showing the extreme detail captured by
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the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile.
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Every detail of the observatory's design
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is to help it answer some of the
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universe's biggest mysteries.
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This is the latest in installments of
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the astrophysicist's attempt to
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understand the universe and in
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particular with that telescope. It
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enables us to more fully understand the
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risks of asteroids that go bump in the
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night. But let's back up. Let's back up.
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Every 10 years, their chosen members of
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my community, the community of
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astrophysicists,
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gather and discuss priorities for the
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next 10 years. What do we want to see
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built? What do we want to see observed?
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Where do we want to go in space? And
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this is what generates what we call the
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decadal survey. And I had the privilege
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of being one of the committee members in
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2010
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when the large synoptic survey telescope
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was being proposed. In fact, it wasn't
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named for anybody yet because it didn't
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exist yet. And here's a letter that came
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with the book, the science book of the
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LSST, and it's to the members of the
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Decadal Survey Committee. And it
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introduces the contents of this book so
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that we can think about it, evaluate it
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and judge whether the allocation of
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monies, scarce resources from the
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National Science Foundation, uh from
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NASA, from private donations as money
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arises within the decade to come. How
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will we aortion it? What are the
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priorities that we establish for
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ourselves as a community? That's how we
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get stuff done. The Hubble telescope was
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in a decadal survey. the VA, the very
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large array radio telescope. That was a
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project that came out of the decadal
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survey. So, we come together and
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we duke it out. Is that the right
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phrase? I don't know. We pitch
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our best science. And since those in the
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decadal survey are among the most
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trusted within the community, if a
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project is elevated or reduced in
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priority, it's done with some sense
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that things landed where they needed to,
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where they should be for the greater
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good of the astrophysics community.
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Well, monies got allocated. And what was
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the goal of this telescope? To not
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simply image the sky. That's what every
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other telescope does. This large
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synoptic survey telescope would take
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multiple images of the sky every single
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night, stringing them together and
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basically making a movie, a movie of the
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night sky. Now, we don't think you need
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that naively cuz you look up at the
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night sky, the star is there tonight and
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it's going to be there tomorrow night
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and the night after that and the night
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after that. But how do you discover
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things that change? Well, we could do it
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passively and say, "Oh, that star just
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got really bright. I wonder when that
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happened. Did it happen an hour ago,
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overnight, yesterday? I wasn't looking
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yesterday." These are how supernova were
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discovered. Stars that blow the guts up
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into the surrounding environment. That
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phenomena takes hours, but if you're not
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looking at it while that happened, you
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missed it. you just see the end result
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and you saw what it was before any of
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that happened and you missed everything
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in between.
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So we know that stars vary in
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brightness. We call them variable stars.
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They'll vary over days. Typically the
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fast ones are 12 hours, 24 hours. Others
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will vary over weeks, some months.
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That's a time scale you can come back to
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the telescope, take an image. Oh, it got
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a little brighter. Oh, it got a little
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dimmer. We we had we took we felt
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comfortable with that. But wait a
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minute. Suppose a star varied within
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just hours and then went back to what it
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was. How how would you know? You would
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miss it. So what the very Ruben
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telescope will do is time sample that's
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the term the official term time sample
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the phenomenon not on a sequence of days
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but hours and even minutes. So that if
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something varies on those shorter time
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scales, it'll get captured
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for the first time ever. Or suppose a
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star got brighter once every 24 hours.
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The sky is huge. It is huge. Most
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telescopes see tiny fractions of the
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night sky. For example, the Hubble
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telescope
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sees a tiny fraction of the area of the
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full moon on the sky. The tiniest
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fraction. If you were to take a picture
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with the Hubble telescope of an area of
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the sky the size of the full moon, it is
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individual exposures
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linked together mosaic until you recover
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the full area you're interested in. If
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we're going to take a movie of the night
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sky and watch things that change, we
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want to do better than that. One of the
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main features of the LSST telescope is
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the size of its camera. The LSST camera
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is the largest digital camera ever made.
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Is the size of an automobile. It weighs
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6,000 lbs. The detector is called a CCD.
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It's what's in all of your phones.
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Charge couple device. And it digitally
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records what's out there across the
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entire focal plane of this telescope,
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which is so large its field of view can
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image 50 full moons. So now you just pop
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an exposure and then slew the telescope,
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get another one next to it. And what you
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end up mosaicing is the whole sky
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visible to you in a very short amount of
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time. By the way, the field of view is
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so large it is larger than what can fit
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on the display of your computer screen.
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What do I mean by that? You can put it
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on your screen and then you can zoom in
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and zoom in and you can keep doing this
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before you have exhausted the resolution
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of the image which happens when it
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matches the resolution of your screen. I
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invite you to visit I think we'll
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probably put the link down there
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somewhere where you can zoom into these
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images yourself. Oh, by the way, we put
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telescopes in places where there's not
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many clouds above you. So, we put
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telescopes in high places. Uh this one
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in the Andes mountains of Chile. My
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thesis data many moons ago were obtained
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in the Andes mountains of Chile. And you
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have excellent access to the southern
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hemisphere while you're there. There was
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engineering runs many months ago. That's
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where engineers check to make sure
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everything is doing what it's supposed
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to. And then there's what we call first
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light. very poetic and beautiful
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statement of when the first science is
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obtained from a telescope that's been
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under construction. So in the first data
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release which is in all the news, you
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take a look at an image and you see some
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galaxies and some some stars. Yeah, I
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expect that. But wait a minute, it's a
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movie. All of a sudden you see some of
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these objects are not stationary.
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They're booking across the field of
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view. There's another one going that way
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and then this way. These are
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undiscovered asteroids
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never before documented by any prior
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scientist or telescope. How many
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asteroids did it discover, might you
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ask? It discovered more than 2,000
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asteroids
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in the first 10 hours of operation. By
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the way, we discover a lot of asteroids
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every year. Tens of thousands of
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asteroids. So, I don't want to play down
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the significance of the world's effort
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to discover asteroids, but if we
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discover tens of thousands of asteroids
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in a year, and the Reuben telescope
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discovered 2,000 asteroids in 10 hours,
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that's a month's worth of asteroids in
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10 hours. And by the way, this trunch of
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more than 2,000 asteroids, that's just
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in one section of the sky. There's more
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sky that we're going to learn about and
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we fully expect millions of asteroids to
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be discovered that had never been
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cataloged before. You realize in the
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next few years the Vera Rubin
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Observatory will discover more asteroids
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than have been cataloged in the last two
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centuries. That's science on the move.
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That's astrophysics
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reaching out for the universe
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taking names. This telescope will also
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be able to map large scale structures of
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the universe, galaxies
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and this will give us insights into the
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nature and the distribution of dark
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matter and we should be able to increase
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our data set that helps us understand
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the accelerated expansion of the
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universe which is some phenomenon going
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on. We don't know what's causing it, but
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we can measure it. And we call that dark
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energy. Well, there's a colleague of
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mine, she's deceased a few years now,
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called Vera Rubin. She published a paper
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which basically discovered
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dark matter in galaxies. Dark matter.
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You know what it literally is? It's dark
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gravity. There's more gravity out there
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than any known source of matter. By the
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way, it's something like 20 terabytes of
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data per night that has to be processed
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and and so obviously there no people
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involved in that. Well, people created
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the data pipeline, but the analysis
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that's all automatic otherwise it would
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take thousands of astrophysicists
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thousands of years to analyze these
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data. So, a feature of this telescope is
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that the public owns it in a sense.
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because all of the data will be made
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public as soon as it comes out of the
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processing stream and that means with
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some tools that my colleagues will be
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developing you can help us discover
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things that we might have missed. Not
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everyone knows what question to ask of
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data. You can have your own biases, your
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own expectations.
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And so the this gives new meaning to the
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concept of citizen scientists. So I look
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forward to what role the public plays in
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this going forward. So that's a little
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bit of what's up with that with the Vera
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Rubin Observatory.
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[Music]
