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I am reading the book written in 1982 titled "Quarks, The Stuff of Matter" by Harald Fritzsch. In it he writes about the ISR at Cern, that slammed protons together and in some of those collisions, 2 quarks bounced off each other at right angles to the protons.

I understand this part of it. What I don't understand is how they detected anything. None of the images of the ISR Interaction Areas show any detectors.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-Intersecting-Storage-Rings-ISR-the-worlds-first-hadron-collider-photo-CERN_fig1_44218180

In this photo at almost the exact center is where the protons collided. I do not see a large detector. What am I missing?

Thanks

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  • $\begingroup$ Consider to spell out acronyms. $\endgroup$
    – Qmechanic ♦
    Commented Apr 21, 2019 at 3:43

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The ISR was, in large part, built as an experiment in accelerator technology. When it succeeded, CERN considered it a "facility for experiments". Unlike modern colliders, which are built along with detectors aimed at specific physics, the ISR was well along on construction while the physics was still being discussed.

Eventually, a number of detectors were built and given beam time. Some sample pictures (from this retrospective):

enter image description here enter image description here

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