Where can I find scientific datasets?

[Borg]

I've been working on various database portal projects for the last ten years at work that all deal with the same general type of data. I've been wanting to work with different types of data and thought about working with scientific data for a change. I'm mainly looking for a hobby that I can use to expand my scientific knowledge. My general interest lies in astronomy but, I wouldn't limit myself to that if the data were interesting enough.

I'm assuming that there are datasets on the internet that could be downloaded but, I have no idea where to look. Any ideas?

 

[Pythagorean]

It really depends on what you want. The Alaska Borough of Land Management has a site that they keep their lightning and fire data on (just location and time of each strike/fire).

So if you want that kind of specific data in the particular location, you go to the Alaska BLM web page.

I don't know of any kind of online compendium of all kinds of data. I assume that you'll have to go to different specific places to find different kinds of data, so it won't be an easy hunt.

The best place for a collective of all kinds of data is a research library. My campus has one for bio and one for physical as well as the main library that probably has a lot of data as well.

 

[Saladsamurai]

If your main interest lies in astronomy, I think that turbo-1 could point you in the right direction. IIRC, he got a paper published based mostly on freely available data in the astronomy community.

Maybe search posts started by him...I think it was a year or more ago that he posted about it...but I am sure that I remember it being him.

 

[Monique]

I don't know if this would be something of interest to you, but here is a repository for micro-array data (biological expression profiling) http://www.ebi.ac.uk/microarray-as/ae/

 

[Andre]

Ice core datasets

 

[Borg]

Interesting links - thanks very much! I'll check with Turbo-1 as well.

I had hoped that I could find a dump file that I could use to upload the data directly into Oracle but, from these links and my own searching, I will have to manually structure the tables and import the data. Probably not a bad thing anyway.

Edit: I spoke too soon. I see that the micro-array data does have the sql to set up the tables.
I think that I found one of the turbo-1 data links as well https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2441731&postcount=2"