This participatory breakout session is a playful response to the paper “Preparing to Discover the Unknown with Rubin LSST: Time Domain” by Li, Ragosta, Clarkson and Bianco. Moving beyond the important questions of technical pipelines, the session asks how to grow readiness for the human dimensions of discovery and anomaly detection, with a focus on the social and collaborative processes involved in discovering the unknown.

The session will introduce context on rehearsing discovery through imaginative analogues and simulations. The session will then play-test an early version of a simulation game built around a stream of Rubin-style alerts and conclude with a community discussion.

The agenda for the discussion is to listen to community priorities, consider how cooperation and communication across the Rubin network might be actively researched and supported, and ask how co-designed imaginative simulations might complement Rubin’s technical preparations for discovering the unknown.