Palestrante: Prof. Luiz Nicolaci da Costa (Observatório Nacional)

Resumo: The purpose of this talk is to give a brief retrospective on the enormous advance of cosmology over the last 40 years. From a modest beginning, observational Cosmology has become a prime example of Big Science with several ambitious projects generating enormous volumes of data under way or being planned. Interest in this area comes from the discovery of the mysterious dark energy, whose existence, whatever its nature, has important implications to physics. Emphasis will be given to the sociological changes generated by these multi-national projects, which has required important changes in the way science is done. As a concrete case, the work being carried out by the Laboratório Interinstitucional de e-Astronomia (LIneA), which supports the participation of Brazilian researchers in several of these projects (SDSS, DES, DESI and LSST), will be discussed.