as luke skywalker said
what a heap of junk this is not a
heather jug this phrasey is the
gargamel chamber
it looks a bit not an amazing piece of
equipment now but
back in 1973 this did something quite
remarkable what it did was it discovered
neutral currents
named after hubley's legendary giant
wife of gargantua okay so normally you
know you think of what makes something
move typically it's some sort of
interaction right something to actually
make something move so you know the kind
of things that we we know of that will
do that will be some sort of electric
interaction or magnetic interaction two
electrons you know go past one another
then they'll
they'll repel and so they'll move
however if you've got a neutral particle
passing an electron something with no no
electromagnetic charge
you wouldn't expect anything to happen
except when there's another interaction
involved and that other interaction is
called the weak interaction and that's
what was measured inside this chamber
back in 1973.
so this is a big this is this is a piece
of history it really is a piece of
history this this the experiment that
went on in this machine
actually won er glashoff weinberg and
salam the nobel prize in 1979. what
happened in this they've got a lot to
thank thank this machine for the body of
gagamel's chamber is a huge can
container 4 meters 80 long and 1 meter
90 in diameter its construction required
a far greater precision than that needed
in conventional boiler making so we're
in the science garden insane where
there's a lot of little bits and bobs of
equipment
and some of it's just been put together
as art
this is obviously its original original
thing this this used to weigh 25 tons
when it was full of
freon to guarantee good photographs the
inside of the chamber has to be painted
with an absolute photographic black
against which the thin slender strings
of white bubbles stand out clearly it's
in a terrible state this is disgraceful
there's like a
beer can
right and i don't know if this was
weinberg came along here to celebrate or
what but this is a and and there's i'm
not even i don't want to touch that
there's a cigarette butt down there as
well but uh it's it seems to it's a bit
disappointing really that they let it
get to this state when this is really
scientific history an epoxy resin paint
was used it was applied by an operator
wearing a special heat proof suit for he
was working in a chamber heated to 120
degrees centigrade at the time of the
experiment back in 73 this was full of
liquid freon
and then they passed some neutrinos
through it and there was some electrons
knocking around
now if you just had the usual
electromagnetic interaction
nothing would happen that neutrino has
got zero charge it's not going to do
anything to that electron okay there'll
be a gravitational attraction between
the two but that's tiny that's you're
not going to observe that
so you wouldn't expect anything to
happen
except weinberg and glashoff and salam
predicted that something would happen
that there would be this this neutral
current between them that basically this
neutrino and this electron would
exchange what's called a z particle
okay so that z particle would go between
the the two objects and it would cause
the electron to sort of jut it a little
bit to get a little to wiggle around a
little bit and that happened that was
seen in here basically they threw loads
of neutrinos through this thing to make
sure it happened and the electron
started to wiggle and that was proof
that because we knew there was no
electromagnetic interaction that was
proof of a new type of interaction
taking place
inside this machine
it's the weak interaction it happens in
the sun
okay it's what makes the sun glow so you
know what happens in the sun for example
is a neutron will decay into a proton an
electron and a neutrino that decay
process
happens in the core of the sun it's
essentially what makes the sun glow
that that process is essentially due to
the weak interaction it's a weak process
in front there is enough room to allow
the chamber body to be set up what
weinberg glacioff and salaam did they
merged electromagnetism and the weak
interaction together in a unified theory
called electroweak theory
25 million francs or close to five
million dollars so gargamel is the um
is the mother of gargantua in ravelry's
16th century books on giants uh so it is
pretty big it certainly weighed a lot it
was 25 tons at the at the time of the
experiment so pretty big object i did
say well didn't look as big as i thought
it was going to be but uh it doesn't
look like 25 to it it is a bit
underwhelming when you actually see it
but scientifically it's definitely a
giant what happened in here
but for the selection of the photographs
nothing can quite replace the eyes of
the scanning girl in the hunt for the
tracks of the whimsical neutrino
i've talked about the weak interaction
that that's this other force
and what that does is that's mediated
that comes from the exchange between two
particles exchange either a w particle
or a z particle so they're different
types of particles and new particles
we're talking about here the w for the w
particles called the w because it's
related to the the weak interaction the
z particle was called the zed because
as um as weibuck has said since it was
the it was the piece that completed the
um the story so it's like the last bit
of the story so that's why he called it
zed