This is what happens when 7 physicists play music inside the Large Hadron Collider.

Challenge
To create a piece of music to celebrate 60 years of CERN, and to demonstrate how GÉANT enables big science projects, such as the Large Hadron Collider.

Solution
Using data that CERN researchers use to study the deepest secrets of our world, Domenico Vicinanza, Arts and Humanities Manager at GÉANT, created a piece of music by translating scientific data collected by the four main Large Hadron Collider experiments (ATLAS, ALICE, CMS and LHC), into melody (sonification).

The same infrastructure used by CERN researchers to communicate, exchange and process experimental data was used to create the music. Data sonification is an intensive process and creating melodies from data relies on the pan-European GÉANT network, as well as the EGI grid computing infrastructure.

Results
The music accompanied a video commissioned to celebrate CERN’s 60th birthday. It was shown to official delegations from 35 countries at a celebratory event in Geneva, in September 2014.

The video also captured the world’s attention, reaching millions of people through press coverage and social media. The GÉANT name received excellent exposure, bringing attention to the network’s speed and capacity, while demonstrating the ways in which it facilitates big science.