Science in an Exponential World

Abstract

The amount of scientific information is doubling every year. This exponential growth is fundamentally changing every aspect of the scientific process – the collection, analysis and dissemination of scientific information. Our traditional paradigm for scientific publishing assumes a linear world, where the number of journals and articles remains approximately constant. The talk presents the challenges of this new paradigm and shows examples of how some disciplines are trying to cope with the data avalanche. In astronomy, the Virtual Observatory is emerging as a way to do astronomy in the 21st century. Other disciplines are also in the process of creating their own Virtual Observatories, on every imaginable scale of the physical world. We will discuss how long this exponential growth can continue. Show more