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A Crucial Particle Physics Computer Program Risks Obsolescence
Recently, I watched a fellow particle physicist talk about a calculation he had pushed to a new height of precision. A 1980s-era computer program called FORM. Particle physicists use some of the longest equations in all of science. To look for signs of new elementary particles in collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, for example, they draw thousands of pictures called Feynman diagrams that depict possible collision outcomes, each one encoding a complicated formula that can be millions of terms long. Summing formulas like these with pen and paper is impossible; even adding them with computers is a challenge.
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