Large Hadron Collider Smashes Particles and Crunches Numbers on
a Massive Scale It's been called the search for the God
Particle, the very origins of the universe and the beginning of
time. The effort is massive, akin to early days of the space
program that put men on the moon in less than two decades. It
involves extreme equipment - the Large Hadron Collider is a 16
mile magnetic loop and particle accelerator buried 328 feet
underground in a massive tunnel; extreme speeds - protons
circling the loop at 11,000 revolutions per second, nearly the
speed of light; extreme temperatures - the particles must be
kept at minus 456 degrees Fahrenheit. But smashing particles
together is just the beginning. From there thousands of
scientists around the world will begin crunching the data. The
Large Hadron Collider will produce 10 terabytes of data during
every eight hour run, as much as 10 petabytes per year that must
be stored and examined and scrutinized by scientists in search
of the so called "God Particle" - a theor