Linux & the Large Hadron Collider
The biggest, most powerful atom smasher the world has ever seen, the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), with its 17-mile underground loop and TeVs (Teraelectronvolts) of proton beams, is finally up and running, with Linux in control.
fter some LHC engineering problems were fixed, CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research)'s LHC is now back to work exploring if the standard theories of both how matter and energy holds up and how the universe was created. The LHC will do this by smashing together a pair of particle beams that are shot around the circle in opposite directions at just shy of the speed of light. The resulting collision will produce showers of new particles, including, scientists hope, the elusive Higgs Boson particle.
If you were going to blast together TeVs of protons — an act that might create micro-black holes which, if you were to get in the way of them, would be "the equivalent of having 87kg (kilograms) of TNT dumped into your body," as one CERN scientist put it — which operating system would you want running the show? I'll give you three guesses.