Team ITU@LHC's Official Blog

Yes, it was inevitable. The 'real' LHC webcams.

Back to reality - as we all know by now, the initial LHC beam on was a success, with collisions to follow in due course after the final set of refinements are made to the machine. Then, hopefully, the data starts pouring in for the world to analyse!

To satiate your curiosity in the meantime, you could do some reading around the subject:

The CERN Large Hadron Collider: Accelerator and Experiments
http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/-page=extra.lhc/jinst

On the eve of the LHC: conceptual questions in high-energy physics
http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.4268


There's also lots (and I mean LOTS) of First Day media on the CERN site:

http://lhc-first-beam.web.cern.ch/lhc-first-beam/
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/collection/LHC%20First%20Beam%20Photos
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/collection/LHC%20First%20Beam

CERN's Central Document Server also has a growing archive of all LHC-related experiments at http://cdsweb.cern.ch/collection/LHC%20Experiments?ln=en, also including notes, papers and theses on the technology, concepts and experiments to be conducted. There's a video highlights package of the First Beam day on the LHC First Beam minisite (the direct link: http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1125916).

For those who can't get enough of the video goodness, CERN also have a raft of video footage, B-roll and interviews with key members of the LHC project on their CDSWeb in the videos section, all streamable or downloadable. Check them out here.


And if you've not already installed BOINC, http://lhc.intotheunknown.co.uk/2008/09/lhc-and-us-going-into-unknown-together.html and joined the LHC@ITU team... Well, go do it!

Oh, and there's some real LHC webcams here and here - and while I'm at it, here's some more:

• ALICE
• ATLAS: Control Room
• ATLAS: Surface Halls
• More ATLAS cams

More goodies coming soon!

The BBC is giving massive amounts of coverage to a certain landmark event, and if you are in any doubt as to elements of the LHC or the project as a whole - fear not! The Beeb have published an exhaustingly comprehensive guide to the LHC, and you can check it out on the BBC News web site.

And don't forget, the beam on will be broadcast live on the CERN site tomorrow. Best get some sleep before the start!

In case you haven't heard, CERN is flicking the switch (as such) tomorrow morning (8:30pm UK time) on the Large Hadron Collider, marking the culmination of over twenty years' hard slog and amazing technological development.

One side-effect of all the particle smashing is the ongoing data collected and analysed by the experiment... and the sheer volume of it is astounding; an estimated 44,000 Gigabytes of data are expected to be generated each day (approximately 43 Terabytes), and approximately 15 Petabytes each year.

So, who analyses all this data? Obviously, no one organisation could possibly ever analyse all of this data. CERN has already established the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid;

The mission of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (LCG) project is to build and maintain a data storage and analysis infrastructure for the entire high energy physics community that will use the LHC.

The data from the LHC experiments will be distributed around the globe, according to a four-tiered model. A primary backup will be recorded on tape at CERN, the “Tier-0” centre of LCG. After initial processing, this data will be distributed to a series of Tier-1 centres, large computer centres with sufficient storage capacity and with round-the-clock support for the Grid.

The Tier-1 centres will make data available to Tier-2 centres, each consisting of one or several collaborating computing facilities, which can store sufficient data and provide adequate computing power for specific analysis tasks. Individual scientists will access these facilities through Tier-3 computing resources, which can consist of local clusters in a University Department or even individual PCs, and which may be allocated to LCG on a regular basis.

However, these academic institutions can't handle everything - even with similar arrangements worldwide. CERN realised this a fair while ago, and has partnered with Berkeley's Open Infrastructure for Networked Computing (BOINC), to create the LHC@home project. Just like other projects such as Folding@Home and SETI@Home, LHC@home will harness the combined power of millions of peoples' computers to process small chunks of data in one of the largest computing grids in the world.

The best thing? We can all be a part of it. All you need is a copy of the BOINC software installed on your computer; join the project (full instructions are available on the LHC@home Installation page, but there are only a couple of steps you need to perform) and then join the ITU@LHC team!