This is the place where particle
detectors come to die. The people at CERN
affectionately call it the detector
graveyard.
What you can see standing behind me is
an electrical staircase, a zigzag
arrangement of capacitors and rectifies
each which double the voltage as you
step up each time. Invented in 1932, it
goes up to what at the time was a
whopping 500,000 Volts.
These particles were then given an extra
kick before being injected into CERN's
much larger machines, being taken to
higher energies. Before the LHC there was
LEP and it used 128
of these things radio frequency
cavities. Using radio frequencies of 352 MHz
these things would accelerate the
electrons and positrons before collision.
This is Gargamelle and it has nothing to
do with the Smurfs, it's in fact a 25-tonne
bubble chamber. Filled with 18 tonnes of
liquid freon or propane, it detected
some of the most rare interactions of
elusive particles, neutrinos. But this
bubble chamber is even bigger
weighing in at 26 tonnes and filled with
30 cubic metres of liquefied gas, it was
the Big European Bbubble Chamber, and this
was the piston that activated it. But it
was this beast the UA1 which won the
Nobel Prize in 1984 for the discovery of
the W and Z bosons.
Charged particles flying through the
detector ionized the gas around it and
then the wires send that signal to all
this electronics. And going back to
CERN's very first particle accelerator,
the synchrocyclotron lives in a tomb of
its own. It's controls now dormant for
some twenty eight years.
Thanks so much for watching this video
please do comment below and let me know which was
your favorite detector that's now dead
and otherwise do like this video and
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