4 ms·

Major work starts to boost the luminosity of the LHC

76 points by okket 8y ago

ovi256 8y ago
The CERN is running a Kaggle competition, TrackML, that is a key factor for the success of the HL-LHC project. They already know that the current solution for reconstructing particle trajectories from raw sensor data, based on Kalman filtering, will suffer from combinatorial overcharge if the number of collision events goes up 10x. Even if they extrapolate computing power going up in the next years. Thus their approach of looking for a better track reconstruction solution, based on ML. This is not just a science popularization contest, it's vital for making the HL-LHC succeed. Without it, the accelerator, the new sensors and data infrastructure will collect the raw data, but the physicians won't be able to process it, so they won't get any new insights. https://www.kaggle.com/c/trackml-particle-identification https://www.kaggle.com/c/trackml-particle-identification
- ephimetheus 8y ago
  Partly, yes. There are aspects that we hope to fix with ML (for instance inspired by that challenge), but we’re also working on other projects aimed at tackling high luminosity. Unfortunately, ML is not a silver bullet that can solve all of our problems.
xref 8y ago
awesome, thought it was going to be shutdown for 8 years to make these upgrades "the LHC will continue to operate, with two long technical stop periods that will allow preparations and installations to be made for high luminosity alongside yearly regular maintenance activities. After completion of this major upgrade, the LHC is expected to produce data in high-luminosity mode from 2026 onwards"
- beojan 8y ago
  It shuts down at the end of this year, and restarts in 2021. During this period the first set of detector upgrades will be installed. Then, it shuts down again at the end of 2023 for the rest of the upgrades before restarting as HL-LHC in 2026. https://project-hl-lhc-industry.web.cern.ch/content/project-schedule https://project-hl-lhc-industry.web.cern.ch/content/project-... So it'll be shut down for about half of those 8 years.
everdev 8y ago
How is there a .cern TLD? Are there any other highly specific TLDs? I'm assuming they're not available to the public right?
- saagarjha 8y ago
  For your reading pleasure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains#Brand_top-level_domains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_dom...
  - everdev 8y ago
    .bananarepublic Have we reached peak TLDs?
saagarjha 8y ago
> proton-proton collisions per second…referred to by physicists as “luminosity” That's an interesting way to reuse that term!

76 points by okket 8y ago

The CERN is running a Kaggle competition, TrackML, that is a key factor for the success of the HL-LHC project. They already know that the current solution for reconstructing particle trajectories from raw sensor data, based on Kalman filtering, will suffer from combinatorial overcharge if the number of collision events goes up 10x. Even if they extrapolate computing power going up in the next years. Thus their approach of looking for a better track reconstruction solution, based on ML. This is not just a science popularization contest, it's vital for making the HL-LHC succeed. Without it, the accelerator, the new sensors and data infrastructure will collect the raw data, but the physicians won't be able to process it, so they won't get any new insights. https://www.kaggle.com/c/trackml-particle-identification https://www.kaggle.com/c/trackml-particle-identification

ephimetheus 8y ago
Partly, yes. There are aspects that we hope to fix with ML (for instance inspired by that challenge), but we’re also working on other projects aimed at tackling high luminosity. Unfortunately, ML is not a silver bullet that can solve all of our problems.

xref 8y ago

awesome, thought it was going to be shutdown for 8 years to make these upgrades "the LHC will continue to operate, with two long technical stop periods that will allow preparations and installations to be made for high luminosity alongside yearly regular maintenance activities. After completion of this major upgrade, the LHC is expected to produce data in high-luminosity mode from 2026 onwards"

beojan 8y ago
It shuts down at the end of this year, and restarts in 2021. During this period the first set of detector upgrades will be installed. Then, it shuts down again at the end of 2023 for the rest of the upgrades before restarting as HL-LHC in 2026. https://project-hl-lhc-industry.web.cern.ch/content/project-schedule https://project-hl-lhc-industry.web.cern.ch/content/project-... So it'll be shut down for about half of those 8 years.

everdev 8y ago

How is there a .cern TLD? Are there any other highly specific TLDs? I'm assuming they're not available to the public right?

saagarjha 8y ago
For your reading pleasure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains#Brand_top-level_domains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_dom...
- everdev 8y ago
  .bananarepublic Have we reached peak TLDs?

saagarjha 8y ago

> proton-proton collisions per second…referred to by physicists as “luminosity” That's an interesting way to reuse that term!