Public computing power to help search for Higgs boson

BBC : Volunteers can help the Large Hadron Collider team with the search for new fundamental particles by participating in LHC@home 2.0 . Part of the search for the new particles, including the Higgs, involves simulating particle collisions and comparing the results with data from actual collisions at the LHC; home computers are now advanced enough to provide some of the necessary computing power to conduct the simulations. The simulations provide a theoretical reference for the LHC collisions. Discrepancies between the simulations and the collision data most often indicate the need to refine the simulation models or their parameters, but they can also reveal new phenomena that existing theory doesn’t account for. Other “citizen science” projects making use of the public’s home computers are Folding@home , which studies protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases, and SETI@home , which uses home computers to download and analyze radio telescope data in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.