According to Jerry Ostriker (Plumian Professor, Cambridge;
Professor of Astrophysics, Princeton; Provost, Princeton),
"Surveys aren’t just something that astronomers do, they are the
only thing astronomers do." These words are understandable,
given Prof. Ostriker’s intimate association with the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey that is presently transforming our view of
the optical universe. The ability to systematically survey one
quarter of the sky, with the dynamic range and spatial
resolution to zoom in to study individual objects, is providing
us with the first truly 3-dimensional map of the nearby cosmos.
The optical portion of the spectrum unveils the moderately
energetic and hot components of the universe, but the physics of
the cool constituents is probed at radio wavelengths. [New
Paragraph] The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) of 350 telescopes,
each 6.1 m in diameter, will do for the radio sky what the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey has done for the optical sky. And it will do
it so rapidly that it will also provide