Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Bevatron was the world’s largest atom smasher when it was build for $US9 million in the early ’50s. Soon, it’ll be reduced to a pile of rubble.
The 125,000-square-foot facility was one of the crown jewels of the world of particle physics back then, but at this point its sadly outdated and has outlived its usefulness. But back in the ’50s, it earned a Nobel Prize for Emilio Segré and Owen Chamberlain, who discovered the antiproton within a year of the Bevatron’s completion.
Just think: how long will it take for us to decide that the Large Hadron Collider is an outdated piece of junk? And what will we be replacing it with? [Wired Science]
marc
Friday, July 10, 2009 at 12:35 PMI remember reading about this collider in American Promethius, the Robert J. Oppenhiemer biography. it seems a shame to destroy an installation of such historical importance to the field of experimental physics.