Abstract

The proposed symposium will bring together world-class experts to address the methodological and technological challenges posed by massive data sets produced by the new generation of telescopes and observatories. Astronomy is at the forefront of Big Data science with exponentially growing data volumes and data rates, now entering the petascale regime at optical, infrared and radio wavelengths. The data structures are not simple, and the procedures for using them to gain astrophysical insights are not obvious. Astronomy is truly becoming data-driven in the ways that are both quantitatively and qualitatively different from the past. The informational content of the modern data sets is so high that archival research and data mining not merely profitable, but practically obligatory; researchers who obtain the data can only extract a small fraction of the science that is enabled by it.