Welcome to RHIC News

We hope that this web publication will in some small measure reflect the excitement of the RHIC and AGS program at Brookhaven, as explained by some of the people who are doing the experiments, analyzing the data, and writing the papers.

The Origins of RHIC
By Robert P. Crease
How RHIC came into being is a remarkable story that illustrates what historians call recombinant science, where new and innovative things result from putting together many existing pieces in a novel way. The story takes place in three “acts,” so to speak. Act I involves an accelerator project called ISABELLE, which was proposed in 1972, approved in 1978, and terminated in 1983. Act II is about what made it possible for the ISABELLE project to be transformed into RHIC. Act III takes place in a single week in July 1983, when this transformation took place. More...

Resonance Production in STAR
By Patricia Fachini
Resonances are hadrons that decay via the strong nuclear force within 10⁻²³ second. The first resonance was discovered in 1960 and in 1968 a Nobel Prize was awarded to Luis Walter Alvarez for his work, which included the discovery of many resonances. The discovery of resonances such as the Σ(1385), K*(892), and ρ⁰ helped confirming the quark model.  More...

The Electron Ion Collider Meeting at Stony Brook University
By Abhay Deshpande
The electron ion collider (EIC) enthusiasts met at Stony Brook University’s Wang Center on December 7 and 8, 2007 for their first meeting after the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee’s (NSAC) Long Range Plan (LRP) was approved by the full NSAC on December 3 and 4, 2007 in Washington. The organizers of the SBU meeting were pleasantly surprised by their enthusiasm, and had to change the room before the meeting to accommodate the larger number of participants. The final tally was about 110 registered participants.  More...

Holiday Party Sponsored by the Association for Students And Postdocs
By Astrid Morreale and Christine Nattrass
While vacation/holiday time is approaching, we would like to remind you that there will still be people at the lab who are taking data or who are too financially crunched to go away this holiday season, most of them students or postdocs.  More...