The Case for Deep, Wide-Field Cosmology
  Much of the science case for the next generation of deep, wide-field
optical/infrared surveys has been driven by the further study of dark energy.
This is a laudable goal (and the subject of a companion white paper by Zhan et
al.). However, one of the most important lessons of the current generation of
surveys is that the interesting science questions at the end of the survey are
quite different than they were when the surveys were being planned. The current
surveys succeeded in this evolving terrain by being very general tools that
could be applied to a number of very fundamental measurements. Likewise, the
accessibility of the data enabled the broader cosmological and astronomical
community to generate more science than the survey collaborations could alone.
With that in mind, we should consider some of the basic physical and
cosmological questions that surveys like LSST and JDEM-Wide will be able to
address.
