Big Bang needs big database

摘要

On 10 September the world's biggest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), will begin hurling subatomic particles, called protons, around a 27km circular tunnel running beneath the Swiss-French border. The idea is that the particles should crash into each other. By setting this in motion, particle physicists hope to learn more about the physical universe. At the same time, they are reinventing the way they share their research. An international initiative that will involve more than 2,000 physicists from 150 research institutions in more than 30 countries, the LHC experiment is being managed by the Geneva-based particle physics laboratory Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Founded in 1954, Cern has a distinguished scientific pedigree - it has been home to three Nobel laureates, and is where in 1990 Tim Bemers-Lee invented the World Wide Web.