Bevatron, 1956

Panoramic view of interior of Bevatron, 1956. The Bevatron was a particle accelerator (specifically, a weak-focusing proton synchrotron) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which began operating in 1954. At the time the Bevatron was designed, it was strongly suspected but not known, that each particle had a corresponding anti-particle of opposite charge, identical in all other respects, a property known as charge symmetry. The Bevatron was built to be energetic enough to create antiprotons, and thus test the hypothesis that every particle has a corresponding anti-particle. Confirmation of the charge symmetry conjecture in 1955 led to the Nobel Prize for physics being awarded to Emilio Segrè and Owen Chamberlain in 1959. Hundreds of new particles and excited states were suddenly revealed, which marked the beginning of a new era in elementary particle physics. Luis Alvarez inspired and directed much of this work, for which he received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1968. The Bevatron received a new lease on life in 1971, when it was joined to the SuperHILAC linear accelerator as an injector for heavy ions. The next generation of accelerators used "strong focusing", and required much smaller apertures, and thus much cheaper magnets. The Bevatron was finally decommissioned in 1993. The demolition of the Bevatron began in 2009 and completed in 2011.

Credit
Science Source / LBNL/Science Source

Dimensions
6000 x 2492 pixels

Print Size @ 300 dpi
20 x 8 inches / 51 x 21 cm