CERN Open Data Portal Demo

[dalek2point3]

Any hints for non-physicists as to what this enables? Presumably you could have asked for the data anyway, no? Why is this a big deal?

[fnordfnordfnord]

There is a good case for delaying the release of the data to give the associated researchers a chance to write their papers, theses, etc. A lot of groundwork has to be laid to get one of these experiments constructed, and it wouldn't be right for the ones who did that work to be jumped by an outside group, who might then receive credit for a discovery. After some time though, the data definitely needs to be opened up. It belongs to everyone, and there is no good in keeping it behind a wall forever.

[noobermin]

From what I understand, the data is owned by CERN and not open to the public.

[noobermin]

For those of you who actually are interested in digging in, I have to warn you: ROOT is terrible, really terrible.

[milliams]

Yet it gets the job done in a successful way. At least it's a common core for almost all of nuclear and particle physics.

Also PyROOT (http://root.cern.ch/drupal/content/pyroot) or the newer rootpy (http://www.rootpy.org/) really help.

[tenfingers]

Can you elaborate? I think you mean the ROOT analysis framework, right?

[cozzyd]

Terrible, but there isn't really anything better...

[pinko]

I think this is great; the transition to open data in Big Science will be slow, but it's clearly the right thing to do.

That being said, the biggest short-term practical consequence of this will be a stream of disturbed pseudo-scientists "discovering" things in the data.

[fnordfnordfnord]

>That being said, the biggest short-term practical consequence of this will be a stream of disturbed pseudo-scientists "discovering" things in the data.

So? Those guys have been doing that for ages already. OTOH, don't be surprised if some actual discoveries/improvements happen now, given more open access to the data.