CERN Collider To Trigger a Data Deluge 226
slashthedot sends us to High Productivity Computing Wire for a look at the effort to beef up computing and communications infrastructure at a number of US universities in preparation for the data deluge anticipated later this year from two experiments coming online at CERN. The collider will smash protons together hoping to catch a glimpse of the subatomic particles that are thought to have last been seen at the Big Bang. From the article: "The world's largest science experiment, a physics experiment designed to determine the nature of matter, will produce a mountain of data. And because the world's physicists cannot move to the mountain, an army of computer research scientists is preparing to move the mountain to the physicists... The CERN collider will begin producing data in November, and from the trillions of collisions of protons it will generate 15 petabytes of data per year... [This] would be the equivalent of all of the information in all of the university libraries in the United States seven times over. It would be the equivalent of 22 Internets, or more than 1,000 Libraries of Congress. And there is no search function."
Too much for the 'Net (Score:3, Insightful)
FYI 15 petabytes per year = 120 petabits per year = 120,000,000 gigabits per year
120,000,000 gigabits per year / ~30,000,000 seconds per year = 4gbps of continuous transmission. They could run a fiber across the Atlantic that could handle 4gbps.
Re:OT: The size of the internet (Score:2, Insightful)
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember (Score:1, Insightful)
Worst Hyperbole Ever... (Score:4, Insightful)
That line is some of the worst hyperbole ever. Here's why. First, there was (almost by definition) no one there to 'see' anything at the Big Bang. (Supernatural explanations aside, and this purports to be a science article.) Second, these subatomic particles are formed frequently in nature, as high-energy astronomy has found various natural particle accelerators that are FAR more powerful than anything we're likely to build on Earth.
One hopes the author will do better next time.
Re:All pages are identical (Score:2, Insightful)