The institute needs extremely powerful computers to process and store the information it receives. Indeed, the data churned out by the massive 27-kilometer circumference of the LHC is a bit more than the average PC could handle. Special technology is needed to meet the challenge, as the center’s chief system administrator Andrey Dolbilov explains:

“The equipment we use provides a high-speed internet connection of around 20 gigabytes per second, which is around 5,000 times more than your ordinary connection at home.”

Dubna’s joint institute for nuclear research is part of a high-speed international communications network called “Grid”. Some scientists say that the LHC Computing Grid could become as huge an IT breakthrough as the world-wide web was twenty years ago.

“We’re currently on the brink of a new era of technologies which may be called the world wide grid. The Hadron Collider is an example of how high-energy physics can act as a driver for IT-technologies as well,” said Vladimir Korenkov from Dubna’s information technologies lab.

The Collider was first successfully tested on September 10, 2008, but experiments were halted on the ninth day after a malfunction between two magnets accelerating the particles.

Despite the global economic crisis, the world-wide scientific team both in Switzerland and Russia is gearing up for another spin in October.