End Of An Atomic Era: Berkeley’s Bevatron That Discovered The Antiproton Being Dismantled

Published on July 9th, 2009

Posted by Uncle Dave in Research, science

See more pictures and read about on this groundbreaking machine from the 50’s that Popular Science called a “10,000-Ton Cracker for Invisible Nuts”.

10 users responded in " End Of An Atomic Era: Berkeley’s Bevatron That Discovered The Antiproton Being Dismantled "

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# 1 Heisenberg's Cat said, on July 9th, 2009 at 6:31 am

Yep. Secret stuff. Most people in the Bay Area have no idea what has been sitting on the hill above them.. Better that way. Berkeley morons have since declared Berkeley a “Nuclear Free Zone”. Guess no radiation therapy for YOU!

# 2 Animal Mother said, on July 9th, 2009 at 7:07 am

This hasn’t been landmarked?

# 3 mitsyforest said, on July 9th, 2009 at 7:36 am

butthead/

heh, heh, Beaver-tron…

/butthead

# 4 green said, on July 9th, 2009 at 8:47 am

Cool pics.

# 5 orangetiki said, on July 9th, 2009 at 11:07 am

Wait, 10,000 ton cracker of invisible nuts? Was this a Bevatron or a Perez Hilton insult machine
*rim shot

Really though make that damn thing a museum. You could EASILY charge admission and let movie studios shoot in there.

# 6 GetSmart said, on July 9th, 2009 at 11:18 am

ebay, baby!

# 7 sargasso said, on July 9th, 2009 at 1:51 pm

They’re great for making medical isotopes, too.

# 8 Buzz said, on July 9th, 2009 at 10:00 pm

Once you’ve discovered one antiproton, you’ve discovered them all. They’re like unicorns.

# 9 Uncle Patso said, on July 10th, 2009 at 2:03 am

Some beautiful pictures. I remember when the Bevatron was the most powerful accelerator in the world. It was built so long ago, it probably didn’t even have superconducting magnets! It was the first to achieve energies of a billion electron volts (BEV, thus, the name).

It’s an interesting irony — the smaller the thing you want to look at, the bigger the microscope required. And this thing was just that, a microscope for examining some of the smallest things we had ever looked at up to that time.

Seeing the end of the Bevatron is nostalgic. Too bad we couldn’t manage to finish the Supercollider…

# 10 pedro said, on July 10th, 2009 at 9:33 am

The Bevatron had a big accident which brought us to this alternate reality we’re living, which is quite crappy. Smug San Franciscans are quite happy with this new reality and are dismantling it before someone else notices and tries to bring us back to the reality we had.

How else you explain all this “capitalism is bad” crap going around?

I only hope the Hadron Collider can repair the damage now.

Adam Curry should start spreading the voice about this. I think it also had something to do with the AF447 crash.

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