This essentially shows the amount of proton collisions created by the Large Hadron Collider as a function of time.
I have my own personal “analysis” code set up so that every Friday I run on the newest data available. Then, by the afternoon or Monday morning I have new plots to look at and show colleagues.
I do this on Friday because that’s when a list of “good” data-taking periods is published. That is, there is a group of people that decide when the detector was fully operational, working as expected, and recording useful data. They then publish a list of this “good data”, and everyone else uses that list so that they run on useful data. An example of “not useful” data (for physics) would be if one or more parts of the detector were off, or not working properly.
The plot I show here is the amount of proton-collision data available. It grows more than linearly because the intensity of the beams is being increased as well. Someday, in the distant future, the LHC will be able to deliver an amount of collisions in one work-week equivalent to everything we’ve recorded since turning on in May this year. Someday.
