Distance visualization: Data exploration on the grid

Our increased ability to model and measure a wide variety of phenomena has left us awash in data. In the immediate future, the authors anticipate coll ecting data at the rate of terabytes per day from many classes of applicati ons, including simulations running on teraflop-class computers and experime ntal data produced by increasingly more sensitive and accurate instruments such as telescopes, microscopes, particle accelerators, and satellites. Generating or acquiring data is not an end in itself but a vehicle for obta ining insights. While data analysis and reduction have a role to play, in m any situations we achieve understanding only when a human being interprets the data. Visualization has emerged as an important tool for extracting mea ning from the large volumes of data that scientific instruments and simulat ions produce. The authors describe an online system that supports three-dimensional tomog raphic image reconstruction-and subsequent collaborative analysis - of data from remote scientific instruments.