More than a dozen international IT firms have partnered to create Helix Nebula - The Science Cloud, which will be used by European researchers to provide cloud-based computing support for scientific discoveries.

After billions of dollars were spent to build, start, shut down and then fix and re-start the Large Hadron Collider, the system has finally produced enough data for some long-awaited scientific analysis.

CERN, the European particle physics organization that runs the Large Hadron Collider, is embracing server virtualization and cloud computing technology to improve CPU utilization and the delivery of computing resources to scientists around the world.

The world's largest particle collider is scheduled to go back online at about half power this fall in an effort to get the problematic machine working on some science.

A network of hundreds of thousands of home computer users recently discovered a rare celestial object by donating their computers' downtime to a worthy cause.