The Planet's Most Massively Awesome Computer to Switch On September
There's a global computing effort dedicated to moving vast volumes of data around the world. You already knew that, but this one isn't being used to pirate movies. It's the computational support system for the work that will take place at the Large Hadron Collider, and it's the largest scientific computing project to date.
The accelerator ring might be the pinnacle of human research into the microscopic unknown, but its activation is only the beginning of the search, not the end. Once started it will be a source of staggering amounts of data - it turns out that when you have a 23-km installation and sensors that can detect things right down to the proton scale, you get over two hundred megabytes a second out of the thing. After billions of dollars of building, they'll look pretty silly if the run out of storage space.
Instead, the data load will be spread over hundreds of participating
facilities around the globe, filtered and organized by multiple tiers
of routing centers. If the much-heralded Higgs is found, it won't be
by a white-coated scientist hunkered in a high-tech Genevan cavern
madly scribbling on a whiteboard. A computer in Nowhere, Someplace
will match about fourteen pages of random-looking numbers to a preset
condition then throw up a flag. A graduate student will spot that flag
in the morning, run the simulation again, then tell his boss, who will
tell him to check it three more times. He'll call his collaborators,
and the news will spread all the way up the chain in a vast (but
extremely dignified) academic version of fist-pumping and going "Yes!"
Will the efforts of the world find the Higgs boson, or will scientists who should know better succumb to the temptation of hosting the largest game of Counter Strike ever seen? We'll have to wait and see.
Posted by Luke McKinney.
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