Detector UA1

In 1983 the UA1 (Underground Area, Experiment One) demonstrated the existence of the elementary particles W and Z. With this significant discovery Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer won the Nobel prize. What you see is a section of the central detector: the original device was almost 20 feet long and weighed 2,000 tons. The experiment took place at CERN in Geneva and involved over one hundred physicists from around the world.