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

Posted by BeauHD on from the free-for-all dept.

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.

5 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Pseudoscientists of the world, unite! by Lisandro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Pseudoscientists of the world, unite! by starless · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Data from most NASA astronomy satellites is available after a specified amount of time.
      e.g. Hubble Space Telescope data are available after one year, and Fermi gamma-ray space telescope data are available as soon as it's processed (within one day).
      Software tools are also publicly available along with software support.

      Nice to see particle physicists catching up with astronomers on data release!

  2. No reason not to make them available publicly ? by x0ra · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:No reason not to make them available publicly ? by BitterOak · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
  3. Raises the bar by SkyratesPlayer · · Score: 3, Funny

    Before this, the largest collection of collision data was the Russian dash-cam footage on YouTube