“Server rooms are generally chilly places, with high-powered air conditioning systems running at top speed to keep the big iron from melting. The installation team from the University of Wisconsin – Madison is not likely to have an AC problem with its latest Xserve RAID installs; the boxes are configured as part of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory being built at 90º South, otherwise known as the South Pole,” Michael Rose reports for TUAW.
Rose reports, “The ‘extreme astronomy’ project — using cubic miles of the Antarctic icecap as a handy, preconfigured pure water reservoir where possible neutrino collisions can be spotted and analyzed, with the entire mass of the Earth filtering out cosmic rays and other particles — is going to be generating huge amounts of data when it comes completely online. One RAID will be used for scratch storage of that research data; the other will be used for backup.”
Full article with photo and links here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “RadDoc” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: So that’s why Woz is going to the South Pole in Hummers with Buzz Aldrin and James Cameron: to see the Xserve RAIDs!
More about Apple hardware and software for science: http://www.apple.com/science/
Related MacDailyNews article:
Woz plans 2007 Hummer ride to South Pole with Buzz Aldrin, James Cameron to film in 3D – August 04, 2006
This is pretty cool, but all i can say i’d rather stay warm in sunny miami while watching my colts become super bowl champions!!! Go Horse!! (do they run the commercials at the stadium for the fans? cause i’m gonna be pissed if i pay tons of money for a super bowl ticket and i can’t even see the new apple ad, esp if they’re gonna intro the new touchscreen ipod. o well, tivo to the rescue!!)
This was on Apple’s “Hot News” last week, if not earlier.
TUAW ripped it right off of there.
Have they no shame? Let alone journalistic ethics.
I can just see the CNET headlines now. “Apple business goes south…”
“COOL.”
Dude, if you can afford a ticket to the SuperBowl, you can afford the equipment to record the damn game!