CERN Launches Huge LHC Computing Grid

RaaVi writes "Yesterday CERN launched the largest computing grid in the world, which is destined to analyze the data coming from the world's biggest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider. The computing grid consists of more than 140 computer centers from around the world working together to handle the expected 10-15 petabytes of data the LHC will generate each year." The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid will initially handle data for up to 7,000 scientists around the world. Though the LHC itself is down for some lengthy repairs, an event called GridFest was held yesterday to commemorate the occasion. The LCG will run alongside the LHC@Home volunteer project.

Re:Why so much?

[gardyloo]

You only see the impact images where something pretty or exciting happened. For each of those, there are several thousands to several billions of ones where nothing happened. Additionally, there are a lot of quantities to be measured which don't show up on pictures of particles doing curlicues in magnetic fields, such as spectroscopy data (at least several megabytes from each of several hundreds of detectors per collision).