The Planet's Most Massively Awesome Computer to Go Live September 10th

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.

Today, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has announced that the LHC will go online on September 10.

But the only data CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has produced thus far is a thoroughly debunked urban myth—that the particle accelerator buried under the Swiss-French border will create an apocalyptic black hole.

On September 10th, researchers will activate particle beams within the 17-mile-long ring, and the world’s most powerful particle accelerator will begin collecting experimental data. The LHC’s research potential is staggering, with physicists hoping to use the accelerator’s extremely high-energy proton collisions to generate a range of theoretical particles. Some of those particles could help us to understand the nature of mass, including the as-yet-undetectable dark matter that accounts for so much of the universe’s mass. Other particles might prove the existence of extra dimensions, or lead to entirely new theories or physical laws

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.