By ninemsn staff
Scientists have designed a super-fast information network capable of downloading data at 10,000 times the speed of a typical broadband connection.
Particle physics research centre CERN has designed the network, dubbed "the grid", to cope with the staggering amount of data its new particle accelerator will produce, The Times reports.
CERN's particle accelerator, called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), has been built to shed light on the origins of the universe and will produce enough data each year to fill 56 million CDs.
The scope of the task meant scientists at CERN needed to create a network capable of handling and analysing enormous amounts of data.
The grid is a kind of parallel internet, consisting of 55,000 servers connected to each other using fibre optic cables and modern routers. The internet, in comparison, relies on technology originally designed for telephony, which slows the transfer of data.
Fibre optic cables run from CERN to 11 other research institutes around the world. Each of these centres connects to existing high-speed academic networks.
Computers on the grid are able to send entire movies to personal computers in seconds, rather than minutes or hours, and could enable holographic video calls and online gaming involving hundreds of thousands of people.
The Times quoted David Britton, a physics professor at Glasgow University, as saying the grid technologies could "revolutionise society".
"With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot imagine".
The grid will help the scientists at CERN analyse data from the LHC, which has been set up to locate the Higgs boson, an elusive particle which theoretically gives matter mass.
The 27km-long LHC will shoot beams of protons at each other in an attempt to recreate conditions similar to those that followed the big bang.
The LHC has been the focus of some controversy, with an American and a Spaniard launching a lawsuit claiming it could create a black hole which will destroy the earth.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee is credited with inventing the World Wide Web at CERN in 1989.
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