Interactive grid computing aids particle physics Almost two decades ago physicists at CERN, overwhelmed by the amount of experimental data in need of processing, first developed the web technologies. For forthcoming larger scale experiments, the novel grid computing environment provides the necessary resources for data analysis. Digital Economy © Shutterstock CERN at Geneva is the European laboratory for particle physics. There, high-energy experiments are conducted with the use of large accelerators, devices that accelerate elementary particles like protons to speeds close to the speed of light. Collisions between these particles provide crucial information for the fundamental questions in physics. Near completion is a new accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) where two beams of protons accelerated inside a tunnel of 27km in circumference will collide head on. With these speeds and energies, the conditions a fraction of a second after the Big Bang are recreated. Questions regarding the origin of matter, for example, may well find some rational explanation. It is no surprise that soon after the conduction of such high magnitude energy experiments an unprecedented amount of data will be produced, requiring handling, processing and thorough analysis. Exceptional in both quantity and sophistication, computational recourses can handle such an amount of data. The CROSSGRID project has developed a large interactive grid framework armed with elaborate data mining techniques that is capable of the aforementioned magnitude of data analysis. The collision of the two beams gives rise to a wealth of physical phenomena. Elaborate detectors gather the relevant information which then is stored in distributed databases. The developed data mining techniques use on line filtering and neural networks to distinguish the important events (signal) from the background. The distributed techniques have reduced from hours to minutes the time required for these analyses. Moreover the CROSSGRID project partners have developed the user friendly Migrating Desktop integrated with both application and tools and equipped with the virtual network computing (VNC) client for interactive applications. More information along with tutorials can be found at: http://www.crossgrid.org/
