Bubble chambers are detectors filled with a superheated liquid, in which charged particles produce tiny vapor bubbles along their trajectories. These bubbles trace the paths of the particles, allowing physicists to reconstruct their motion, interactions, and decays. Invented by Donald Glaser in 1952, the bubble chamber revolutionized experimental particle physics and earned Glaser the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physics.

The 15-foot bubble chamber at Fermilab, operational in the 1970s and 1980s, was one of the largest in the world. It allowed the observation of hundreds of thousands of particle interactions, including mesons, baryons, and rare decay processes. Many important measurements of the strong and weak interactions were performed with this chamber, and its data contributed to mapping the zoo of known subatomic particles.

Bubble chambers have also played a key role in Nobel-winning discoveries. While the Nobel Prize usually honors the discovery itself rather than the detector, several laureates, such as Luis Alvarez in 1968, relied on bubble chambers to study particle resonances and rare decay modes. These detectors provided a unique window into the invisible world of subatomic physics and shaped our understanding of matter’s fundamental building blocks.