How CERN Probes the Universe Without Borders

The giant particle playground under the French countryside

Chapter 1

The giant machine under the grass

Chapter 2

The hunt for cosmic ghosts

Chapter 3

Giant eyes underground

Chapter 4

The global digital brain

Ch 4 · The global digital brain

lara Science Without Borders

We leave the borders at the door to trace the universe together

The birth of the World Wide Web

lara This universal linked information system ran on a NeXT computer, using hypertext, HTML, and HTTP to launch the first web server.

Quiz

Who invented the World Wide Web while working as a software engineer at CERN in 1989?

Quiz

What brand of computer was used to host the world's very first web server at CERN?

The vastest systems of connection still rely on simple, fragile human care.

The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid

lara The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid lets thousands of scientists collaborate on physics data.

Quiz

Roughly how many petabytes of data does the LHC generate each year?

Quiz

What is the name of the global network CERN created to process and store LHC data?

Fun Fact

First web server label: The first web server had a hand-written label in red ink that read: 'This machine is a server. DO NOT POWER IT DOWN!'

Quiz

What is the purpose of the 'trigger system' used in CERN's detectors?

Quiz

Approximately how many collision events are saved for analysis each second after filtering?

Gossip

Would you let CERN host your personal computer's idle processing power?

Quiz

In which year was CERN founded to help rebuild European science after World War II?

Quiz

Roughly how many scientists from around the world collaborate on CERN projects?