LHC@home

One exabyte of experimental data has now been gathered from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), marking a major milestone for CERN’s storage system.

The LHC smashes billions of protons together every second. By collecting information about the ensuing particle showers, physicists can test the Standard Model and look for signs of new physics beyond it.

The challenge for analysts is the sheer quantity of data generated. A highly selective filter system, known as a trigger, is therefore used to remove all but a tiny fraction of the data collected by the detectors. This remaining data goes on to the CERN storage system and can then be analysed by the scientists.

Now, after running the LHC for over 15 years, CERN has collected and stored one exabyte of experimental data from the superlative machine. To put this into perspective, a standard single-layer DVD holds 4.7 gigabytes of data, or around 2 hours of video, so, to watch an exabyte of film would take nearly 50 000 years