Australia Telescope National Facility

The Labyrinth of the Unexpected: unforeseen treasures in impossible regions of phase space

Kerastari, Greece

This workshop will explore how radio astronomy has enabled flexible processing environments that are opening new windows on the Universe (discovery of FRBs is the prime example) and may open others (e.g. SETI). How have unexpected discoveries unfolded in a technical sense and in the new/traditional fora for scientific debate? Has anything benefited the process or held it back?

As we enter the era of the SKA, are we prepared for the technical challenges and, more importantly, do we have people prepared for serendipity? Or are we preparing a generation of SKA users to blindly extract data from catalogues to produce plots? Do these questions matter?