Towards the Virtual Observatory

Abstract

The Mosaic browser was released in early 1993, and fundamentally changed the way that, first, science, and later almost all other areas of social activity, are carried out. The drivers for the web, as is well-known, were scientific activities related to high energy physics — particularly Berners-Lee who developed the http protocol at CERN; and high performance computing and networking at NCSA — and particularly Andreesen who developed the Mosaic browser. Another comparable sea-change is currently being sought by many projects nationally and internationally relating to the Grid. Closely related is the concept of the virtual observatory in astronomy — viz., statistical properties of data in distributed databases as counterposed to traditional concern with single specified objects — and to e-science. In the latter area, the increasingly online scientific literature has led to enormous productivity growth in science.