We came across this ongoing grid computing project between CERN and HP. It offered the opportunity to register and use computing power on a pay-as-you-go basis. It was a complex platform built entirely on Java and Xen. Our experiments with the platform were brief, but they gave us a lot to think about regarding the importance of the concept of buying and using computing power; in this specific case, it’s even possible to sell your own computing power.

Research on the Tycoon project began in 2004 and will be tested to its fullest extent on an experimental basis at the CERN laboratories in Geneva once the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) becomes operational.

This “time machine,” a 27-kilometer underground tunnel between France and Switzerland—the largest in the world—operates at extremely low temperatures (-271°C) in order to take advantage of the superconductivity of all the cables needed for the electromagnets used to accelerate subatomic particles (hadrons).

In the experiment scheduled for October 2008, proton beams will collide at speeds very close to the speed of light, recreating (they say) the conditions that existed before the Big Bang.

There will be a great deal of controversy surrounding this experiment, given the theories put forward by some scientists regarding the possibility of opening time portals to the future.

In any case, the LHC will generate 15 petabytes of data each year, and consequently, the computational resources needed to enable CERN scientists to process this information will be enormous.