S07 → N400
The Spike of Fascinating & Unexpected
SPIKE 37
→ BUBBLE CHAMBER.
© 1. CERN — The decay of a lambda particle in the 32 cm hydrogen bubble chamber / 2. CERN PhotoLab — Big European Bubble Chamber BEBC, The vacuum tank for a BEBC coil / 3. CERN — Reproduction of a particle collision at the heart of the LEBC (LExan Bubble Chamber) experiment / 4. CERN / 5. National Archives and Records Administration — First traces (bubble tracks) observed in a bubble chamber in liquid hydrogen by John Wood (1954) / 6. CERN — Bubble chamber picture of pair-production following annihilation of positron / 7. Berkeley Bevatron Accelerator — Photograph of the interaction between a high-energy p--meson / 8. unknown — Brookhaven 7-foot bubble chamber, which led to the discovery of the charmed baryon (a three-quark particle) / 9. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory — Photograph of a neutrino interaction event in the 15-foot bubble chamber at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) / 10. Fermilab History and Archives Project — Vacuum tank for Fermilab's 15-foot bubble chamber / 11. Brookhaven History — The bubble chamber picture of the first omega-minus / 12. CERN — Gargamelle is the big bubble chamber built at the Saclay Laboratory in France in the late 1960s and now exposed at the Square Van Hove / 13. CERN — Inside the Gargamelle bubble chamber (1970s).
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The bubble chamber was invented by Donald A. Glaser, an American physicist. He developed the concept and created the first working prototype in 1952 while working at the University of Michigan. Glaser’s invention revolutionised the field of particle physics by providing a means to visualise the tracks of subatomic particles produced in high-energy particle collisions. They were widely used in particle physics experiments from the 1950s to the 1970s, providing valuable insights into the fundamental constituents of matter and the forces that govern their behaviour. While newer technologies such as particle accelerators and detectors have largely replaced bubble chambers for high-energy physics research, they remain valuable tools for education.
One of the most famous discoveries using a bubble chamber was the omega-minus particle in 1964 at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the United States. The omega-minus particle, a baryon composed of three strange quarks, was first observed in the tracks left by particle collisions inside a liquid hydrogen bubble chamber. What makes this discovery particularly intriguing is that the existence of the omega-minus had been predicted by the quark model, proposed by Murray Gell-Mann and independently by George Zweig, but was not yet experimentally confirmed.
In 1973, researchers at CERN, using a bubble chamber called Gargamelle, observed the first evidence of neutral current interactions. Unlike other interactions mediated by the weak force, which involves the exchange of charged W bosons, neutral current interactions are mediated by the neutral Z boson. These interactions do not change the electric charge of the particles involved, making them much harder to detect. The bubble chamber images showed neutrinos interacting with electrons or nuclei in the liquid without producing charged particles directly, indicating the presence of neutral currents. This discovery provided strong experimental support for the electroweak theory, developed by Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam, and Steven Weinberg.
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→ Sourced from: SYSTEM 04 (Poutchka Patrol)
→ Stored online: N400 Spikes Repository
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→ Search log: Google images / CERN Document Server / Fermilab History and Archives Project
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