At this point, while I only had two meetings on the fourth day at CERN, both meetings require so much explanation that I have decided to break the description of the fourth day into two different entries. In this entry, I shall describe my tour of the CERN Computing Centre and will discuss the benefits of Grid Computing (read on if you have no idea what Grid Computing is).
DAY 4: Part 1
I arrived at 10:00 am again at the CERN Reception Centre. As usual, Katie arrived shortly after to pick me up and to rush me off wherever it was that I needed to go. On this particular day, my destination happened to be the CERN Computing Centre, the place that houses the center of the humongous network of computers all participating in something known as a Grid. If all works out the way it should, this Grid Computing System, the center of which was where I stood on the morning of Day 4, should be able to successfully process and perform calculations on over 15,000 Terabytes of LHC data a year. Some of this data will be raw data but most of it will be analysis data and simulations. Just to give you an idea, according to the sheet of random facts about the Grid Computing of the LHC, 15,000 Terabytes is roughly equivalent to 3 million DVD's and if each of these DVD's contained films of 1.5 hours each, watching all the films continuously would take more than 500 years. In other words, without Grid Computing, it would be physically impossible for humans to handle all the data that will be erupting from the LHC in about year or two.
However, upon my arrival at that CERN Computing Centre on my fourth morning, I had only a vague idea that Grid Computing even existed. When I had read articles about the LHC in the past, there was rarely mention of Grid Computing. More often than not, Grid Computing was overshadowed by all the other cool factors of the LHC...its size, its importance in the world of particle Physics, its location...all the factors which before this entry, I had focused on. Little did I know that underneath these fine details about the grandest experiment in all Physics lay perhaps the most immediately useful element of CERN. Yes, I do firmly believe that Grid Computing will be a huge thing someday, just as the invention of the World Wide Web was back in the day.
Let's be serious, folks. Finding a Higgs boson is not exactly the most useful discovery in the whole world. You can't even see the darn thing and even if it was created at the LHC, it would disintegrate immediately into other particles. Not to say that finding it is not important...it is extremely important and it would tell us tons of information about the World and Universe that we live in. But if we are looking for an application using a Higgs boson...well, we might just have to wait a few hundred years before someone figures that out.
During this whole trip, I have repeatedly asked the Physicists why they feel it is necessary to answer all these questions about the Universe. At this point, when we already know so much, what makes one person believe that he/she can understand the way that the entire Universe works together. Perhaps, we shall always be looking for smaller and smaller fundamental particles...smaller than up and down quarks and electrons! Maybe something such as a "Standard Model" that describes the entire Universe in one neat mathematical formula is completely impossible. Is there anything useful about the LHC?
Surprisingly, most of the scientists have had the same answer to these questions. Yes, they say, perhaps we will always be probing deeper and deeper and will never actually be able to know everything about the Universe, or perhaps there will be a point when humans know everything, when we have uncovered all the mysteries...but anyway look where our probing has led us so far! 100 years ago, nobody could imagine any useful application for the electron...now, modern life as we know it couldn't survive without such inventions that involve electricity (electron, electricity...see the connection?). In 1989, CERN struggled to find a way to transport large amounts of data from its last particle accelerator, LEP, from one computer to another in an easy fashion. So, to solve this problem, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web! Clearly, some of the most influential inventions have developed from the research of particle Physicists.
In other words, the real answer is...right now, there isn't really anything useful about the LHC itself. Perhaps in hundreds of years there will be an application that will use a Higgs boson. But really, the most immediately useful part of the LHC does not come from the particle Physics itself, but from inventions such as Grid Computing that come as a result of the LHC. Much in the same way as the World Wide Web changed the world, Grid Computing will do the same thing. This invention is probably the coolest thing that I have ever heard of!
So, after all this talk, what exactly is Grid Computing anyway? A Grid is essentially a network of computers. While the World Wide Web uses the internet to communicate, a Grid uses the internet to share the power from many different computers to create one supercomputer that can solve various large problems. When the LHC begins, for example, its Grid that combines the power of thousands of computers all over the world will be used to do calculations and hopefully recognize new particles. However, and here is the cool part, since the LHC has not begun running yet, its future Grid has been free to work on other world problems such as finding cures for Malaria, Cancer and AIDS as well as solving the problem of global warming and finding alternative energy sources. For example, somewhat recently, the Grid system was used to simulate various different proteins ability to halt Malaria from attacking a humans blood cells. In about six weeks, around 30 different proteins were found that could stop Malaria. Of course, now there is the issue of getting those proteins to the people in areas most affected by Malaria, and the Grid system can work on that as well. So, basically, by combining all of these thousands of computers, Grid Computing can help the world quickly whereas without such a system, it might have taken humans years to discover such solutions.
Of course, my next feeling was to wonder why we were going to turn off all of these other wonderful applications of Grid Computing to use it on the LHC. But to my disbelief, I was told that there are many Grid Computing systems around the world...the technology has taken off in popularity (no wonder right?). In fact, turns out that there is a way to join your own personal computer to a Grid Computing system...apparently, there is a network titled BOINC, which allows a person to volunteer their own personal computer to be used in a Grid whenever the computer is not being used. So, tadah! Not only can large centers such as CERN use fancy technology to solve the worlds problems...you can too!! It really is fascinating and I suggest that if you are at all interested in volunteering for BOINC, that you check out the website. It is listed below:
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/
All you do is choose the project or multiple projects that you want your computer to work on during its idle time, and then run the software and thats it. It sure sounds like a great way to contribute to the world. I must say that I am myself considering joining this amazing program.
And, for me, the coolest part about Grid Computing is the fact that I got to see where it in its most cutting edge state (see pictures below). Yes, folks, CERN has decided to rely on Grid technology to solve its problems with the internationality of the LHC, and because of that fact, CERN has been working hard to come up with the best and probably one of the most powerful Grid Computing systems ever made.
So, on the fourth morning of my involvement with CERN, I met a woman named Cristy Burne who was to be my tour guide around the "computer farm" as the Physicists call the Computing Centre. Cristy Burne, it turned out, was not a Physicist as I would have expected. Instead, she was...well...like me, an interested person who had decided to write about Grid Computing. Now, she is a journalist who writes about Grid Computing for the international journal, iSGTW (International Science Grid This Week). Cristy Burne, in other words, was someone who I could totally relate to...she was a science journalist, an English/History/Writing minded person who had developed this interest in science and had thus, decided to write about it. Actually, now looking back upon this meeting with Christy, it totally makes sense to me that she was a non-Physicist writer. An Australian complete with a buret on her head, Christie had a certain artistic flair about her. But the most shocking part of this conversation was learning that it was actually Katie who had founded the magazine, iSGTW. As you can probably tell, my awe of Katie only continued to grow throughout the entire experience.
Then, all of a sudden, Katie disappeared and I was whisked off into a massive room filled with the most computer hard drives that I have ever seen in my life. The whole room really looked like those crazy IBM commercials...come on, you know the ones...the ones where there is a big case of shelves filled with black computer hard drives and a guy standing next to it saying "see, there is an easier way to organize business computers." Except in the IBM commercials, there is only one case of shelves generally in the middle of an empty room...in the CERN Computing Centre, there were rows and rows of these crazy cases of shelves. Some were enclosed in little glass huts so that air conditioning could keep the computers cool without leaving the enclosed area. Others were left out in the open. In addition, as one looked beyond across the sea of hard drives, there was a wallpaper on the other edge of the room of flat-screened computer screens. The entire scene was somewhat overwhelming to witness.
Yet, this opening room was not the only room in that center filled with computer hard drives or other technology. When Cristy and I walked downstairs, I discovered that there were plenty of other rooms with just as many hard drives as well, and some with robots in them. Yes, I said it, ROBOTS!!! Of course, they weren't like the robots that one might see in movies, but instead little miniature machines that sped about tiny compartments moving tapes around this way and that in an effort to organize. Only at CERN could you find something like that!
Finally, when we reached the end of the tour, I was shown, I think, what came to be one of my absolute favorite points of the week...the computer on which the World Wide Web had been created!
Well, that's about it for this entry! Stay tuned for further entries on my trip to the LHC!
-Carolyn
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