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Photos: The Cern computers cracking the Big Bang
Inside the IT hub that powers the Large Hadron Collider...

By Nick Heath

Published: Monday 06 October 2008

Once the data arrives at the centre it is immediately stored and reprocessed before being made available to 7,000 physicists in 33 countries via the LHC grid.

The LHC grid is linked to the centre through dedicated 10Gbps connections.

The grid can handle about 50,000 users at once, sharing out bandwidth and processing power between scientists. Its links across the globe are shown on this screen.

Jouanigot said: "The grid is a worldwide collaboration through many hundreds of sites and will get information through very powerful networks."

Photo credit: Cern