Editorial - Beam Day

Simulation of the detection of a Higgs Boson.  Image courtesy of CERN

Today, after more than a decade of meticulous preparation in the high-energy physics world—in theoretical frameworks, detector research and development, site construction, data simulations, analysis software, distributed computing infrastructures, networks and more—CERN’s Large Hadron Collider proton beam turns on and will begin circulating through its entire 27-km length.

International Science Grid This Week congratulates the scientists, engineers, technicians, software developers, managers, coordinators, students, secretaries and all the other hard-working, talented and dedicated participants whose effort made this happen. The sheer volume of data that the LHC experiments will need to process became the driving force for developing the World-wide LHC Grid (wLCG), and hence Enabling Grids for E-SciencE (EGEE) in Europe and Open Science Grid in the United States. iSGTW celebrates with them, and thanks them, as this publication is an offspring of that collaboration.

The Time Projection Chamber of ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment). Image courtesy of CERN

In the beginning

OSG—the primary grid computing infrastructure for US-based scientists in CMS and ATLAS—started Science Grid This Week, with Katie Yurkewicz as editor, to feature grid-enabled science achievements in America. EGEE teamed up a year later, and International Science Grid This Week was born. After a time, Katie moved on and Danielle Venton took over as editor, followed by the arrival of Cristy Burne. As Cristy moved to GridTalk, Dan Drollette and Anne Heavey came on board as European and American co-editors, respectively.

iSGTW strives to balance coverage of grid-related research from around the globe, from physics, chemistry and biology to storm prediction and ancient literature. LHC news is just one part of all the grid-related news in this publication, but we continue to recognize the LHC as the driving force in enabling other research to benefit from the power of grid computing.

To acknowledge this significant event, we feature a special LHC section for the next few weeks, at the top of the right vertical column, where you can easily find past LHC-related coverage from our publication. 

— The Editors, iSGTW