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Discoblog
« World’s Rarest Tortoise Could Finally be a Father
Could Beijing’s Polluted Air Sicken Olympic Spectators? »

Will the Large Hadron Collider Create 12 Miles of Data?

LHCThe Large Hadron Collider is almost ready. Scientists are cooling the components of this giant underground accelerator to extreme temperatures—already -350 degrees Fahrenheit in some places—in anticipation of activating it next month. But don’t expect immediate answers—first physicists are going to have to wade through the sea of numbers.

Nature reports today that the LHC will create 700 megabytes of data per second. If you stacked the number of CDs necessary to store a year’s worth of LHC’s data, the pile would reach 20 kilometers into the air, or about 12.5 miles.


Thankfully, the physicists have hundreds of thousands of computer processors to help them digest this data deluge. And the algorithms they wrote will help computers pick out the most interesting particle collisions—the ones worthy of more study.

Still, don’t hold your breath for the theory of everything. This could take a while.

Image: Courtesy of CERN

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July 22nd, 2008 1:46 PM Tags: cosmology, Large Hadron Collider, subatomic particles
by Andrew Moseman in Physics & Math. ’Nuff Said. | 5 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

  • Robert I. Marsh II

    An interesting perpective-update! Important Notice: I am hosting a personal CERN LHC Public Opinion Poll, at the direct web-link below. Everyon is welcome to observe, but must register in order to Vote! The reason for registration: to prevent spam-bot malware networks access. So, don’t let that stop you’re vote! I intend to forward the poll results to CERN top officials, and even Stephen Hawking! They have already been notified of it’s ‘opening status’ and ‘in progress’ nature! These results shall be sent, before any major collisions. The poll closes October 17, 2008, so let your voice be heard, for the now, and future generations! Thanks for the support!

    http://www.volconvo.com/forums/science-technology/22661-cern-lhc-alice-atlas.html

  • http://www.LHCFacts.org JTankers

    Do you know what you get when you mix high energy colliders with Professor Otto Rossler’s charged micro black hole theory?

    Answer: a golf ball

    http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.20min.ch%2Fnews%2Fwissen%2Fstory%2F24668213&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=de&tl=en

  • Michael Noonan

    Actually the event horizon for a planet the size of the earth is about the size of a marble. It is interesting the amount of energy compaction if looked at in terms of a golf ball.

    A golf ball of uranium will yield the equivalent fission energy to a train load of coal. A golf ball of hydrogen undergoing fusion releases about 500 coal trains of energy. A golf ball size containment of primordial particles let loose would probably have enough energy to knock the moon out of earth orbit.

    Currently alternate theories are vast in number and one of the more promising is by Dr Mordehai Milgrom in the area of variable gravity. Over the last decade there have been so many “fixes” to the standard model that Mike Disney another respected physicist has called the standard model of physics Humpty Dumpty covered in bandages waiting to come undone.

    The argument is that nature is not well understood enough. Dark matter has not been found after 20 years of searching. Only 4% of the universe is known and dark energy is not really known and like gravity is still undefined. To continue when the standard model is so poor in predicting the stream of discoveries coming in from the astronomical community is in my humble opinion nothing short of criminal negligence.

    Even in the last few years there has been a stream of articles where respected scientists are saying the standard model did not predict the latest observations of the matter. That can clearly be seen such as the early and rapid formation of stars in galaxies which is not consistent with universe formation. The results from the failure of Gravity Probe B and that respected physicists are murmuring the unthinkable … what if the model is wrong?

    Even galaxy rotation curves do not follow the known laws so most likely the Large Hadron Collider will fail because the standard model is not just near enough broken and improperly understood, it really is broken and not understood. Currently there are too many reputations on the line for there to be anyway out of what is most likely a doomsday scenario. Even the Doomsday Vault is parked too close to this experiment for it to serve much practical use.

    The most likely outcome is that it will most certainly fail and even the alternate models at best offer major destructive events and really leaves us one question. How many deaths will eventually be attributed to this scientific endeavor … some arbitrary number if not all of us?

  • bob

    Michael Noonan. – You fail peckerhead.

  • http://golfgameblog.blogspot.com/ BudBundy

    Hi there, I found your blog via Google while searching for sites about golf and your post looks very interesting for me.





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      Discoblog also includes the daily feature NCBI ROFL, in which two prone-to-distraction grad students post real scientific articles with funny subjects. Email your tips to ncbirofl [at] gmail.com. Follow the ROFL feed here.

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