Gargamelle optical tube

Gargamelle was the name given to a big bubble chamber built at the Saclay Laboratory in France during the late 1960s. The experiment ran at CERN from 1970 - 1976 and in 1973 found the first experimental evidence of the particles responsible for transmitting the weak force. The weak force, one of the 4 fundamental interactions at work in the universe, has long been the subject of research at CERN. The force is responsible for radioactivity and is the reason why the sun shines. Gargamelle observed what is known as neutral currents, the process of a neutrino and electron transforming into a muon and a neutrino by exchanging an electrically neutral force carrier. The interaction was triggered by a beam of neutrinos and recorded by photographing the trail of bubbles left behind in the freon that filled the experiment's main chamber. Gargamelle has been conserved and is now displayed in the Microcosm garden.