Gargamelle was the name given to a big bubble chamber built at the Saclay Laboratory in France during the late 1960s. The experiment ran at CERN from 1970 - 1976 and in 1973 found the first experimental evidence of the particles responsible for transmitting the weak force. The weak force, one of the 4 fundamental interactions at work in the universe, has long been the subject of research at CERN. The force is responsible for radioactivity and is the reason why the sun shines. Gargamelle observed what is known as neutral currents, the process of a neutrino and electron transforming into a muon and a neutrino by exchanging an electrically neutral force carrier. The interaction was triggered by a beam of neutrinos and recorded by photographing the trail of bubbles left behind in the freon that filled the experiment's main chamber. Gargamelle has been conserved and is now displayed in the Microcosm garden.
The ISR (intersecting strorage rings) was used at CERN from 1971 to 1984 to study proton-proton collisions (see AC-010)
Special terminals for the first computer ever used by CERN library.
Prototype made by Breskin.Has never been used. Breskin was a ph.d student working under Charpak supervision. The dimensions include the support.
Sem títuloA wire chamber used at CERN's Proton Synchrotron accelerator in the 1970s. Multi-wire detectors contain layers of positively and negatively charged wires enclosed in a chamber full of gas. A charged particle passing through the chamber knocks negatively charged electrons out of atoms in the gas, leaving behind positive ions. The electrons are pulled towards the positively charged wires. They collide with other atoms on the way, producing an avalanche of electrons and ions. The movement of these electrons and ions induces an electric pulse in the wires which is collected by fast electronics. The size of the pulse is proportional to the energy loss of the original particle.
Sem títuloMulti-wire detectors contain layers of positively and negatively charged wires enclosed in a chamber full of gas. A charged particle passing through the chamber knocks negatively charged electrons out of atoms in the gas, leaving behind positive ions. The electrons are pulled towards the positively charged wires. They collide with other atoms on the way, producing an avalanche of electrons and ions. The movement of these electrons and ions induces an electric pulse in the wires which is collected by fast electronics. The size of the pulse is proportional to the energy loss of the original particle.
Multi-wire detectors contain layers of positively and negatively charged wires enclosed in a chamber full of gas. A charged particle passing through the chamber knocks negatively charged electrons out of atoms in the gas, leaving behind positive ions. The electrons are pulled towards the positively charged wires. They collide with other atoms on the way, producing an avalanche of electrons and ions. The movement of these electrons and ions induces an electric pulse in the wires which is collected by fast electronics. The size of the pulse is proportional to the energy loss of the original particle.
This valve was used in the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR) to protect against the shock waves that would be caused if air were to enter the vacuum tube. Some of the ISR chambers were very fragile, with very thin walls - a design required by physicists on the lookout for new particles.
DELPHI was one of the four experiments installed at the LEP particle accelerator from 1989 - 2000. The silicon tracking detector was nearest to the collision point in the centre of the detector. It was used to pinpoint the collision and catch short-lived particles.
An accelerating cavity from LEP. This could be cut open to show the layer of niobium on the inside. Operating at 4.2 degrees above absolute zero, the niobium is superconducting and carries an accelerating field of 6 million volts per metre with negligible losses. Each cavity has a surface of 6 m2. The niobium layer is only 1.2 microns thick, ten times thinner than a hair. Such a large area had never been coated to such a high accuracy. A speck of dust could ruin the performance of the whole cavity so the work had to be done in an extremely clean environment. These challenging requirements pushed European industry to new achievements. 256 of these cavities were used in an upgrade of the LEP accelerator to double the energy of the particle beams.