Most of the big discoveries in astronomy (e.g.
pulsars, quasars, dark energy) were unexpected, and often made by an astronomer
breaking new ground in the observational parameter space while looking for
something else. The ASKAP surveys such as EMU and WALLABY will also be boldly
going where no telescope has gone before, and so should stumble across major
discoveries, but the large data volumes make it difficult for a human to find
them. So we are designing a machine astronomer, called WTF (Widefield ouTlier
Finder) to sift through the petabytes of data looking for the unexpected. More
details here: A machine astronomer could
help us find the unknowns in the universe and Discovering the Unexpected in Astronomical Survey
Data.
