10,000 times faster Internet activated to capture Hadron data

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was switched on today, and along with it, The Grid, a new superfast network built to capture information from the particle accelerator.

Invented at the same institute as the original Internet was (CERN), The Grid project was started seven years ago in order to capture the vast amount of data that will come from the LHC, the largest particle accelerator ever built.  It is hoped that the LHC will explain some of the building blocks of the universe, including the “big bang” theory, the moment when the universe was created 13 billion years ago.

The LHC will produce around 15 Petabytes of data annually, or 15 million Gigabytes.

The Grid project links together thousands and thousands of computers, to provide the processing power required to analyse this data, and transport this data over a fast optical-fibre network, stretching from CERN headquarters to the US, Canada, the Far East, Europe and other countries all over the world.

The Grid will be then be accessed by scientists and other experts to analyse data from the LHC. 

Although only built for academic purposes, grid technology is being already being adopted by Telecoms providers, and could provide super-fast broadband connections in the future and lead to capabilities such as transmission of holographic images when video-conferencing and downloading of films and other media in a matter of seconds.