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CERN Scientists Recreate "Big Bang" Conditions to Understand How Nature Works
CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, has adopted the latest generation of graphics and data visualisation software from NAG and TGS for the experiments on their next accelerator. CERN run some of the largest and most complex scientific experiments in the world that explore what matter is made of, and the forces which hold it together.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be the world's most powerful particle accelerator, enabling physicists to study the fundamental constituents of matter more closely than ever before. It will accelerate beams of protons to nearly the speed of light before smashing them together and creating hundreds of new particles. By recreating the conditions just a millionth of a millionth of a second after the "Big Bang" when the temperature was ten thousand million million degrees CERN plan to reveal how Nature works at the most fundamental levels.


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 To build instruments capable of creating such extreme conditions and to analyse the results with extraordinary precision is a daunting challenge which demands advances in many highly complex technologies: superconductivity, high-speed electronics, super-computing, material science and many other disciplines. The LHC experiment is expected to generate data at a rate equal to everyone on Earth simultaneously making 10 telephone calls each and is expected to run for 15 years.

To interpret these vast datasets, CERN have complimented their existing use of the NAG Libraries by designing a framework that is based on standard commercial solutions where possible. Selecting a suite of visualisation products from NAG, IRIS ExplorerTM, Open InventorTM, MasterSuiteTM and OpenGLTM, has enabled CERN to concentrate on implementing the HEP-specific elements.

This choice of software delivers the ultimate flexibility, from point and click visual programming to C++/Fortran development using the NAG Libraries.
"We selected IRIS Explorer for the accuracy and reliability of the graphical results it produces from scientific calculations."
Dr. Jamie Shiers, Coordinator of OO software development at Cern/IT
 

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IRIS Explorer is a powerful visual programming environment for 3D data visualisation, animation, and manipulation. It is available on a broad range of PC and workstation platforms. OpenGL, Open Inventor and MasterSuite are graphics libraries that bring the power of 3D graphics to developers. These products are some of the building blocks upon which IRIS Explorer is built.

By using IRIS Explorer to plug 'modules' together, CERN scientists are able to interactively analyse collections of event data and visualise the results for presentations or publication. Each 'module' is a software routine that the scientists select from the large library included with IRIS Explorer. In addition, CERN have developed a range of modules that meet the particular needs of the 6,500 scientists who come to CERN to undertake their high-energy physics research. Alternatively, organisations can use NAG's Consultancy Services to write modules tailored to their particular requirements.

 Commenting on the decision to use IRIS Explorer, OpenGL and Open Inventor software for the new LHC experiments, Dr. Jamie Shiers, Coordinator of OO software development at Cern/IT said, "The LHC is a very long term project. The tools that we need will be used to design the LHC experiments and then to analyse the experimental data that will be available in about 10 years time. The experiments will probably run for some 15 years. Given such long time-scales, it is important for the plan to allow for evolution."

Although CERN has produced their own software tools in the past they have recognised the benefit of using commercially developed and supported software and are standardising on IRIS Explorer. Other research bodies involved in the LHC experiments throughout the world are expected to do likewise. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the USA's biggest particle physics lab, are already using IRIS Explorer.


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"The use of de facto standard solutions has to be an essential element of our plan."
Dr. Jamie Shiers, Coordinator of OO software development at CERN/IT
 
Further Information
To find out more about the exciting work on the LHC visit CERN's web site
www.cern.ch

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Last modified: Tue. May 11 1999
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