Collision region of the ISR

This is a collision region from the world’s first proton collider, the Intersecting Storage Rings. The ISR was used at CERN from 1971-84 to study proton-proton collisions at the highest energy then available (60GeV). When operational, ISR collision regions were surrounded by detectors as shown in the photo. In 1972, the surprising discovery of fragments flying out sideways from head-on proton-proton collisions was the first evidence of quark-quark scattering inside the colliding protons . This was similar to Rutherford’s observation in 1911 of alpha particles scattering off the tiny nucleus inside atoms of gold. The ISR beamtubes had to be as empty as outer space, a vacuum 100 000 times better than other CERN machines at the time.