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Bill Gates and Microsoft Fund Telescope

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sat Jan 05, 2008 10:18 AM
from the he's-still-a-nerd-people dept.
Space Science
coondoggie writes "Bill Gates and the Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences this week donated $30 million to an ambitious telescope that researchers say will be able to survey the entire sky every three nights — something never done before. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) Project got $20 million from the Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences and $10 million from Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates. Expected to see its "first light" in 2014, the 8.4-meter LSST will survey the entire visible sky deeply in multiple colors every week with its 3 billion-pixel digital camera, probing the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy and opening a movie-like window on objects that change or move. With the telescope scientists will be able to quickly find Earth-threatening asteroids and exploding stars called supernovas and will be able to map out 100 billion galaxies, according to researchers."
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Submission: Bill Gates and Microsoft spaceman fund telescope by coondoggie (973519)
[+] "Perfect" Mirrors Cast For LSST 114 comments
eldavojohn writes "The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (which was partially funded by Gates & Co.) announced a world record casting for its single-piece primary and tertiary mirror blanks, cast at the University of Arizona. From the announcement: 'The Mirror Lab team opened the furnace for a close-up look at the cooled 51,900-pound mirror blank, which consists of an outer 27.5-foot diameter (8.4-meter) primary mirror and an inner 16.5-foot (5-meter) third mirror cast in one mold. It is the first time a combined primary and tertiary mirror has been produced on such a large scale.'"
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  • ah! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Coraon (1080675) on Saturday January 05 2008, @10:20AM (#21922884)
    but does it run Linux?

    • Re:ah! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by morgan_greywolf (835522) <morgan_greywolf@ ... m ['rr.' in gap]> on Saturday January 05 2008, @11:02AM (#21923288) Homepage Journal
      Most probably not.

      In addition to receiving funding from Bill Gates and Microsoft, another sponsor was the Charles Simonyi Foundation. Charles Simonyi [wikipedia.org], for those who are not aware, was responsible for Microsoft Office as head of Microsoft's Applications division for many years. Much of the early version of Microsoft Word for MS-DOS and Multiplan were coded by Simonyi. He is the originator of the so-called 'Hungarian' notion for identifiers prevalent among M$ developers, where an identifier's type is embedded in the name, so you get variables like sName or nCount.

      • g_bHungarianNotCausesBrainDamage = TRUE;
        :-)

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Your.Master (1088569)
        His version of Hungarian notation was a bit different from the one used now. For him, it wasn't type as in string vs. int vs. pointer to a long, it was about different kinds of data within types. For instance, a string guaranteed to be valid & null terminated would have one prefix and a string with no such guarantee could have another.

        http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Wrong.html [joelonsoftware.com]

        sName and nCount is a bit of a perversion on that theme, given that a good IDE will show you the type if you want it and

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by VENONA (902751)
        OTOH, it will generate 30TB per day.

        According to http://www.lsst.org/About/Tour/software.shtml [lsst.org]
        "Current projects show that approximately 5000 mathematical operations are required per pixel of the image to process and classify survey data. Scaling this to the size of the LSST data stream shows that approximately a thousand of today's high-end processors will be required a feasible proposition. Advances in processor power over the next five years will reduce this number to a few hundred, by which time the req

    • Yes, it probably will.

      All modern control systems for research telescopes and instruments involve a supervisory layer and that is often run on a Unix or Unix-like system. LSST also has to do an unprecedented amount of soft-real-time processing on the data stream (see their tour page [lsst.org], and this kind of astronomical software typically runs on Linux and/or Unix.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by NixieBunny (859050)
      I work at Steward Observatory, who is a major collaborator in the LSST project (and will make its mirror). The telescopes that Steward makes usually use Linux for the control systems, since it provides a reasonable level of real-time control capability and is fairly sane to administer. Telescope control requires getting rather close to the hardware, some thing that Windows is not especially good for. Our office is pretty much a 50-50 mix of Windows and Linux machines, with Windows used grudgingly in most ca

    • Re:ah! (Score:4, Informative)

      by chrisd (1457) * <(moc.anobid) (ta) (dsirhc)> on Saturday January 05 2008, @01:39PM (#21924930) Homepage
      Please note that the LSST -isn't- about os politics, but about near earth object detection, and the telescope is going to create a crapton of data that needs storing and processing but last I talked with the engineering team, they were planning on running Linux across the -many- machines they need to process the data.

      Chris DiBona

  • Isn't this what my tax money is supposed to fund? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by schwit1 (797399) on Saturday January 05 2008, @10:23AM (#21922912)
    As opposed to the bridge to nowhere or the Woodstock memorial.

    • Re:Isn't this what my tax money is supposed to fun (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Amiga Trombone (592952) on Saturday January 05 2008, @10:28AM (#21922966)
      It might be arguable that it should, but the reality is that it never will.

      One more argument for keeping money in the pocket of the people who earn it, rather than the government's....
      • The founders of the U.S. had a problem with taxation without representation, not taxation in general. As long as elected representatives have overseen taxation and government expenditure, all is running as intended. This Slashdot mentality of "This money is mine, and the government is just stealing it!" is just elitist dismissal of democracy, because you think you know better how money should be spent than your community. Plus, it's crazy to claim that the money is yours alone when, hey, there wouldn't be coinage without the government and they can determine what to do with it. If you don't like it, start bartering.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by schnikies79 (788746)
          It is in no way an "elitist dismissal of democracy". Is it so bad to think for ourselves instead of expecting big brother to do it for us?

          Your mentality is nothing more than you can't do it yourself, you have to have the government. Just another way to destroy individualism.

          Moderate taxation isn't a problem, heavy taxation to support social programs is.

          • Moderate taxation isn't a problem, heavy taxation to support social programs is.
            And choosing between these relative qualifiers is pretty much the reason governments exist. Or at least, the major reason governments should exist =).

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by brusk (135896)
                No roads, then? No schools?

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by Adambomb (118938)
                Try to put those tasks on paper in an algorithmic form, the founding fathers did and this is where the US ended up. It's not that they had a bad idea, its simply that in terms of humanity there is rarely a condition with only a binary set of solutions or "valid" reactions (no matter how much media groups and marketers wants you to think this way, and by "valid" i mean the kind where you hear the why's of what someone did and you say "i can see that.."). Subjectivity is the root reason for governments to exi
        • Sorry buddy, I think you're pigeonholing all the founders into a category of men who only cared about taxation without representation and nothing more... but lets ignore the fact that the majority of the founding fathers were individualists and against large government in ADDITION to disagreeing with taxation without representation, and take on your argument as if all your premises were true. Sorry, but when you take MY money, apply it to YOUR favorite pet programs that I feel are not worth the money or a d
        • The founders of the U.S. had a problem with taxation without representation, not taxation in general. As long as elected representatives have overseen taxation and government expenditure, all is running as intended. This Slashdot mentality of "This money is mine, and the government is just stealing it!" is just elitist dismissal of democracy, because you think you know better how money should be spent than your community.

          You might want to try reading the original Constitution, prior to the 16th Amendment. Y
        • Plus, it's crazy to claim that the money is yours alone when, hey, there wouldn't be coinage without the government and they can determine what to do with it.

          You say that like it matters - Do you really believe "wealth" doesn't exist without the underlying pyramid-scheme of fiat currencies?

          Perhaps more relevantly - The US Treasury just last month cracked down on a popular form of exactly what you claim we wouldn't have without the government. Doesn't it strike you as strange that they would need to ha

    • As opposed to the bridge to nowhere or the Woodstock memorial.
      Bridges and memorials don't pose a challenge to religious dogma.
      • As opposed to the bridge to nowhere or the Woodstock memorial.

        Bridges and memorials don't pose a challenge to religious dogma.

        You seem philosophically akin to the ignorant bible thumper who takes the mistranslated English version of the bible literally in every way, you seem to merely be the mirror image that thinks science means anti-religion. The truth is that science and religion are compatible. The Vatican operates a telescope and funds research:
        Dark Matter and Energy in the Cosmos
        The Accelerat

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by ChadAmberg (460099)
        As a thought experiment, how is this any different than SpaceShipOne? Lots of geeks cheered when private enterprise started doing space travel. And now just because private philanthropy is providing a very capable telescope, suddenly it's why isn't the gummint paying for this? Let's take money away from widows an orphans on this...

  • I bet... (Score:4, Funny)

    by aurb (674003) on Saturday January 05 2008, @10:26AM (#21922946)
    ...they are going to use it to search for potential markets for Microsofts` products...

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by moondo (177508)
      The guy put $30 mln of his own money. Let him do what he wants with it... and if we benefit in the process, let's be grateful. Maybe we can learn a lesson on business.
  • ...if it didn't take so long to copy the images it takes onto external storage.

  • someone has to say it... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 05 2008, @10:28AM (#21922968)
    Blue Sky Of Death

  • but if it's a VR simulation... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    why don't we just hack in and download the map directly? :P

  • They're going to use it to watch . . . (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rolgar (556636) on Saturday January 05 2008, @10:35AM (#21923038)
    The winner of the Google Lander program land on the moon.
  • There is no place on earth where you can see the entire night sky over three days. There will always be stars hidden.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by $RANDOMLUSER (804576)
      Indeed. Cerro Pachon [gemini.edu] is at 30 degrees south, in central Chile, meaning that a fair portion of the northern sky won't be visible.
    • If you define "the night sky" to mean "that portion of the sky visible at night from where you are located", then it is quite possible.

  • It looks like you're trying... (Score:5, Funny)

    by gimpeh (1209722) on Saturday January 05 2008, @10:40AM (#21923086)
    ...to scan the sky!

    Do you want to
    • create a document template?
    • send an email to a friend?
    • send the invasion fleet to a new planet?

  • "probing the mysteries of dark matter"

    In my opinion this will go the way of the aether [wikipedia.org] and be totally discredited in time. The aether being denser than Iron and being able to propagate light .. er at the speed of light.

    The basic evidence for 'dark matter' is that galaxies are rotating to fast and maintaining there shape differently than gravitational allows for. They should fly apart or never been formed. Rather then change the current theory, scientists went out and invented 'dark matter'.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by vertinox (846076)
      The basic evidence for 'dark matter' is that galaxies are rotating to fast and maintaining there shape differently than gravitational allows for. They should fly apart or never been formed. Rather then change the current theory, scientists went out and invented 'dark matter'.

      So care to explain why there appears to be an expanding universe? Dark matter is a stop gap, but unless you provide a better reason, its all we got. I think that was the point of projects like this to either prove or disprove 'dark matt
    • There is dark matter. There is more evidence for it besides galactic rotation curves. Lookup the virial theorem and galactic cluster binding energy (in other words, without dark matter there's not enough mass to hold galactic clusters together). Google the Bullet Cluster, in this specific case they have been able to detect a distinct separation between the dark matter and visible matter. There is definitely something there, even if we don't know what it is.

    • Re:there is no dark matter .. (Score:5, Informative)

      by volsung (378) <stan@mtrr.org> on Saturday January 05 2008, @11:29AM (#21923550)

      Galactic rotation curves are only one of the pieces of evidence of dark matter. There is also a lot of evidence due to weak lensing that there are large invisible mass distributions. The Bullet Cluster is an especially impressive observation of two clusters colliding. The shockwave from the baryonic gases smacking into each other has separated the hydrogen from the dark matter, as seen when you overlay the xray map and the mass distribution reconstructed with weak lensing. Modified theories of gravity can most easily explain discrepancies when the visible matter and apparent invisible matter are concentric (such as in rotation curves). Then you just need to tweak the radial force strength at large distance. But in a system like the bullet cluster, the visible and dark matter have been separated, and that's a lot harder to explain with modified gravity. (Not that people aren't trying, of course...)

      Astronomers fought long and hard against dark matter, but grudgingly accepted it after it became more and more difficult to explain galactic rotation curves, weak lensing, the large scale structure of galactic clusters, and the power spectrum of variations in the cosmic microwave background without it. It all fits together much better when you introduce a very weakly interacting source of mass into the soup that makes up the universe. (Weakly interacting enough to become a nearly collisionless fluid early on during the expansion of the universe.) The smoking gun will be the detection of dark matter in a controlled lab setting. Those searches are just now beginning to ramp up.

    • There is no dark matter really. Matter of fact it's all dark.

  • Bill Gates and Simonyi foundation... (Score:3, Informative)

    by $random_var (919061) on Saturday January 05 2008, @10:56AM (#21923220)
    ...not Bill Gates and Microsoft. Anybody making that misattribution clearly didn't even read the headline of the actual article, let alone the chunk of text quoted in the summary.
  • I can't wait to see the television they have to build to display those images...

  • Is that how much it costs? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by johannesg (664142) on Saturday January 05 2008, @11:24AM (#21923498)
    Only $30 million to look for planet-destroying rocks from outer space? Is that really all it takes to saveguard our species and world from such threats? If so, why aren't there half a dozen of these things already scanning the heavens every second of the day?

    Gee, *humans*...

    • Well, probably because of the fact that many would see it as $30mil to be able to look for planet-destroying rocks from outer space, and then watch as said rock slams into us as what the hell do we do about it currently =).

      If theres a viable "... Then blows the offending chunk of matter into its constituent atoms" support system, then yeah crank em out.
    • You have a strange idea of "safeguard". This makes it more likely me see it coming. It still hits and kills us.

      Some people like to watch the doctor do the injection, other people like to close their eyes. Both methods still result in the injection happening...

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by johannesg (664142)
        These things don't show up with 4-hour warning. If you look carefully, you can see them coming years, even decades in advance. That gives us a reasonable amount of time to deflect it (which could be as easy as painting one half of it white!).
        • If we found one tomorrow there is nothing we could do about it now. We'd be better off spending the efforts on coming up with those paint it white options and testing them on rocks we already know about (that aren't going to hit us, and that won't when we deflect them a bit, but have similar characteristics to ones that might) to see if we can deflect them enough to make a difference. Then maybe having a look-see might be worthwhile...

  • Here are links to the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) home page [lsst.org] and its layout and construction [lsst.org].

  • My God! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Ranger (1783) on Saturday January 05 2008, @01:37PM (#21924906) Homepage
    It's full of blue.
    • Ooh, you greedy bastard, chewing out all the bad jokes before anyone else gets a chance.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tomz16 (992375)
      ..and what fuels this wonderful "rate" of technology, if not people investing millions into multi-year (i.e. DIFFICULT) projects.

      If we stopped investing millions into projects like these, your cell phone in 2014 would look exactly the same as it does today.

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