
Major work starts to boost the luminosity of the LHC - okket
https://home.cern/about/updates/2018/06/major-work-starts-boost-luminosity-lhc
======
ovi256
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
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.

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xref
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
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-...](https://project-hl-lhc-
industry.web.cern.ch/content/project-schedule)

So it'll be shut down for about half of those 8 years.

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saagarjha
> proton-proton collisions per second…referred to by physicists as
> “luminosity”

That's an interesting way to reuse that term!

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everdev
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
For your reading pleasure:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-
level_dom...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-
level_domains#Brand_top-level_domains)

~~~
everdev
.bananarepublic

Have we reached peak TLDs?

