Stories from the Grid – The top quark: pointing the way to new physics
European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) releases today the third episode of Stories from the grid – an on-going series of mini documentaries. In this episode, we visit Marcel Vreeswijk and Hurng-Chun Lee to learn more about their research on top quark physics at NIKHEF, the Dutch National Institute for Subatomic Physics. The top quark is the largest of the fundamental building blocks of the Universe. Together with the Higgs boson, it is one of the elementary particles being studied at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and most complex scientific instrument. Particle physicists use the LHC to study variations from the Standard Model and potentially discover new laws of physics, governing everything from dark matter to extra dimensions. The particle known as the top quark is a window into this weird and wonderful world. Marcel explains: “Top quark behaviour is predicted by the Standard Model of physics, but we expect to see deviations from this theoretical prediction in the experimental data from the LHC. And by studying these deviations, we can learn where the Standard Model is not so standard.” “To put it simply, we have the experimental data, we know the predicted background values – so subtracting one from the other gives us the signal we are looking for.” This is where grid computing is indispensable. In the video, Marcel and Hurng-Chun explain how customised grid computing workflows are key to filtering and sieving the massive sets of data down to a manageable size. Without these tools, it would be impossible to pick out the key results that could hold the clues to top quark behaviour. Watch the video on You Tube: http://go.egi.eu/topquark Notes for editors: About Stories from the grid The diverse range of science supported by EGI is being showcased in the Stories from the grid series. Each episode focuses on a particular piece of research that would have been near impossible without EGI. The first episode was launched in February 2012 and describes how the toxic venom used by the marine cone snail can be modified to produce new anaesthetics and alleviate the muscle spasms caused by the condition dystonia (http://go.egi.eu/conco). Episode 2 tells us how grid computing is helping to recreate the sound of an ancient instrument which has not been heard for thousands of years (http://go.egi.eu/epigonion). About the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) EGI (www.egi.eu) is a federation of resource providers set up to deliver sustainable, integrated and secure computing services to European researchers and their international partners. EGI.eu is an organisation established in February 2010 to coordinate and manage the infrastructure (EGI) on behalf of its participants: National Grid Initiatives (NGIs) and European Intergovernmental Research Organisations (EIROs). EGI-InSPIRE (EGI-Integrated Sustainable Pan-European Infrastructure for Research in Europe) is a four-year project involving 50 partners in over 40 countries. The project is co-funded by the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme (contract number: RI-261323) to help lay down the EGI operational and support processes, as well as to build a sustainable e-Infrastructure, independent from project cycles. By the time EGI-InSPIRE finishes in 2014, EGI will be a sustainable and dependable provider of computing resources for European scientists and researchers. www.egi.eu This video was produced by Een van de jongens, a collective of producers and directors based in Utrecht, the Netherlands. In its one year existence the company has produced two children's programmes for Dutch national television and several commissioned short films. Currently Een van de jongens is focussing on short (twenty minute) documentaries.
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