CERN Releases 300TB of Large Hadron Collider Data Into Open Access (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, has released 300 terabytes of collider data to the public. "Once we've exhausted our exploration of the data, we see no reason not to make them available publicly," said Kati Lassila-Perini, a physicist who works on the Compact Muon Solenoid detector. "The benefits are numerous, from inspiring high school students to the training of the particle physicists of tomorrow. And personally, as CMS's data preservation coordinator, this is a crucial part of ensuring the long-term availability of our research data," she said in a news release accompanying the data. Much of the data is from 2011, and much of it is from protons colliding at 7 TeV (teraelectronvolts). The 300 terabytes of data includes both raw data from the detectors and "derived" datasets. CERN is providing tools to work with the data which is handy.

Comments

Pseudoscientists of the world, unite!

[Lisandro]

I just can visualize a horde of crackpots using this data to fuel fringe theories, find messages from God and prove the existence of aliens.

That being said, this is awfully cool from CERN. The raw data will be really useful in academic environments, and the Linux visualization tools are great.

No reason not to make them available publicly ?

[x0ra]

If I'm not mistaken, the LHC has been publicly funded, so these data should have been public to start with. Anything else is bs.

Re:No reason not to make them available publicly ?

[BitterOak]

If I'm not mistaken, the LHC has been publicly funded, so these data should have been public to start with. Anything else is bs.

It's standard practice in experimental particle physics to give those who put the time and effort into designing, building, and running the experiment the first chance to analyze the data and publish results. After that, it's not unusual to release the raw data publicly. Otherwise, there'd really be no incentive to do the work, since someone else could swoop in and publish results without having contributed to producing the data.