U.S. center will analyze some LHC data

LINCOLN , Neb., Aug. 11 (UPI) -- U.S. physicists say they are preparing to handle some of the flood of data expected from the world's next-generation particle accelerator in Europe.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln particle physicists Ken Bloom and Aaron Dominguez have teamed with computer scientist David Swanson to build a computing center that will manage some of the flood of information to be produced by the Large Hadron Collider, located near Geneva, Switzerland.

The LHC, when it begins operations, is expected to produce 15 trillion gigabytes of data every year, the researchers said. That data will be distributed to computing centers worldwide.

The Nebraska center will allow physicists from many universities to analyze data from the LHC's Compact Muon Solenoid -- a more than 12,000-ton detector that will record tracks created by hundreds of particles emerging from each collision in the accelerator.

"It's a challenge to build a facility that could be effectively shared with a worldwide community and local researchers, to make something bigger, better, more useful to university research as a whole," said Dominguez.