Scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, have reinvented the internet. It’s called “the grid” and it’s 10,000 times fast than conventional broadband.
But don’t disconnect your modem just yet. The grid won’t go online until the summer and when it does it’ll be busy recording the 56 million CDs worth of data generated from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a new particle accelerator built to probe the origin of the universe.
If and when it does disseminate down to the public, Ian Bird (project leader for CERN’s high-speed computing project) believes “It will lead to what’s known as cloud computing, where people keep all their information online and access it from anywhere.” Just imagine, one day you’ll explain to your grandchildren how you watched a little hourglass while pages loaded! Until then take a cue from the Slowskys and smell the roses (video right).
