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High‐energy physics

MAY 01, 1983
Experimentalists in particle physics have long regarded computers as essential components of their apparatus and now theorists are finding that significant advances in some areas can only be accomplished in partnership with a machine.
Michael Creutz

Particle physicists have long been conspicuous consumers of computer time. Today’s complex experiments generate prodigious quantities of raw data that require hours of cpu time to be reduced to a form comprehensible to human colleagues. As figure 1 shows, a multitude of computer cathode‐ray screens often dominates the control room of a modern detector. The practicing high‐energy experimentalist inevitably acquires an office cluttered with tapes and computer printouts, confering on the owner the image of a computer “hacker.”

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Michael Creutz, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York.

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This Content Appeared In
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Volume 36, Number 5

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