The World of Particle Physics

Josh Thompson says: Particle accelerators are used to bring subatomic particles (protons, in this case) to very high energies. These energetic particles are smashed together to create exotic forms of matter.

As fast as the light - CERN - Switzerland by Pascal Boegli

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Josh Thompson says: To understand these high-energy particle collisions, physicists build complicated detectors to measure the subatomic spray of stuff coming out. In the 60s and 70s, a common tool for making these measurements was the "bubble chamber". This old bubble chamber is now on display as an elaborate lawn ornament.

CERN Microcosm Garden by Matthew Herndon

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Josh Thompson says: This is a giant detector in Japan. When it is filled with water, it can detect fleeting particles called neutrinos, produced either by the sun, in the atmosphere, or by a particle accelerator on the other side of Japan.

dscf1175 by rolotumazi

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Josh Thompson says: Many modern particle detectors are made of silicon. The particles passing through the material leave behind an electric charge that can be detected and used to determine the trajectory of the particle with high precision. Click through to the photo page for a more in-depth description.

Silicon by Max Sang

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Josh Thompson says: The Tevatron accelerator at Fermilab near Chicago was the workhorse of particle physics for over 20 years. CDF was one of the detectors on that accelerator. The top quark was co-discovered here in the 1990s.

CDF by solarnu

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Josh Thompson says: BaBar was a relatively specialized detector, expressly designed to make precision measurements of so-called B mesons. Along with the Belle detector in Japan, BaBar helped solidify our understanding of how quarks transform from one type to another, leading to the 2008 Nobel Prize in physics.

The BaBar particle detector by Francesco Meschia

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Josh Thompson says: ALICE is one of the detectors at the LHC on the Swiss/French border. It is a specialized detector, optimized for studying the huge of explosion of particles that results from the collisions of lead atoms.

ALICE - A Large Ion Collider Experiment at Cern by dominikf

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Josh Thompson says: One of the flagship detectors on the LHC, ATLAS is enormous. 25m (over 80 feet) high, it is hard to capture its size in a photo.

Kevin Eldon and Simon Munnery at CERN by cernpodcast

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Josh Thompson says: The other flagship detector on the LHC is CMS. All 14000 tons of it was constructed on the surface and then lowered into the cavern below.

the shaft by Marcella

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