Nearly a decade ago, Anthony Tyson and some colleagues at Bell Labs were mulling how dark matter and dark energy might be studied, a notion that later led to the idea of designing a huge telescope. Meanwhile, another group at Bell wondered how to manage gargantuan amounts of data. Over the years, members of the two groups worked together on a telescope concept even as many left Bell for other pastures. Today, Tyson, now a physics professor at the University of California, Davis, is director of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, and some of his former Bell colleagues are at Google Inc, which recently announced it is joining the project.
The 8.4-meter telescope, slated to see first light in Chile in 2014, will survey the entire visible sky every three nights with its 3-billion-pixel digital camera. A new image will emerge every 15 seconds—adding up to a staggering 30 to...
