Exactly. My first thought when I read the title (and I only read a paragraph or two in), was that this seems like a similar problem to analyzing astronomy data.

Exactly. My first thought when I read the title (and I only read a paragraph or two in), was that this seems like a similar problem to analyzing astronomy data. It's a BigProblem problem to which we can apply "stuff." And to answer a probable objection, "It's BigProblem, all the way out."