We spend a lot of time here talking about how TARTLE can help advance a variety of fields through our data marketplace. Whether it’s medical science, tracking the effects of human activity on the climate, or even fields focused on the past like archeology, TARTLE can be of use. Through the sharing of information, both with colleagues and laymen who might have valuable data new advances in understanding can be made, advances that may not happen for years otherwise, if at all.
Today, we turn our gaze to the stars and the field of astronomy, specifically star formation. It’s long been understood that an individual star forms from the slow accretion of gasses into a ball large enough that the pressures and heat generated by its own gravitational force begin a self-sustaining fusion reaction that will go on for billions of years. However, a number of questions remain. Why do some clouds only produce relatively small stars like our own sun while others birth massive giants like Betelgeuse and Rigel in the constellation Orion? Yet others lead to failed stars such as elusive brown dwarfs. Then there is the strange fact that planets form around many of them. Why did they not become part of the star in the center of the system?
Other questions such as why the gas clouds get converted into stars at different rates in different galaxies? Most seem to convert the bulk of their gases into stars in one to ten billion years. Yet others seem to be in a hurry. These starburst galaxies can deplete most of their gas reserves and be filled with stars in under a billion years. Why?
None of that challenges the primary model of stars forming out of massive gas clouds but with these mysteries still in play, it is clear that this is a rudimentary outline at best. As such, astronomers are beginning to turn to Big Data to help get some answers. With hundreds of observatories around the world and even a couple in orbit, insane amounts of data, images of galaxies billions of light years away and of course many stars within our own Milky Way are constantly being taken and stored. Not just photos either. The effort to understand the universe involves more than just pictures. Images are taken in every conceivable part of the spectrum, from the ultraviolet to the infrared and even radio waves from the depths of space are analyzed. Every bit of this data is useful yet it has until recently been siloed off. Fortunately, scientists have begun to see the value in sharing their data, allowing for the creation of massive searchable databases that will allow them to cross reference information from different times and places, using it to test the predictive power of their models. And when they find (as they surely will) evidence that confounds the model, it will be much easier to adjust that model on the basis of new evidence.
TARTLE can of course play a role here and be that data marketplace through which information and theories are shared. Through the marketplace it will be possible to not just refine theories but to determine the best observational techniques and equipment, greatly improving efficiency in the long run.
TARTLE brings other benefits as well. As we brought up recently in an article on archeology, astronomers can anonymously share their own hypotheses, ones that might go against the conventional wisdom. Too often these can’t be aired publicly for fear of reprisals and shaming. Sadly, scientists are as open to bias as anyone else. If you doubt that, check into Einstein’s troubles with accepting the Big Bang sometime. It’s eye-opening. TARTLE can provide a forum for some of these ideas that might be unconventional now but may become accepted as the standard in the future. Now, that says something about the importance and the worth of data.
What’s your data worth?
