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Physics of the Universe
Exploring the Frontiers of Energy, Intensity and the Cosmos
Brookhaven leads high-energy/particle physics experiments onsite and in collaborations around the globe that probe the deepest secrets of the universe and allow physicists to delve into many of the most pressing questions about the fabric of space and time:
- What is the origin of mass?
- Was the universe born with secret symmetries?
- What is the invisible dark matter that fills galaxies?
- What are the masses of ghost-like neutrinos?
- What happened to the antimatter in the universe?
- What is the mysterious force of dark energy?
Featured Projects:
ATLAS Daya Bay LBNE LSST BOSSBrookhaven explores fundamental questions about the universe
by participating in experiments at the
three frontiers of particle physics.
Energy Frontier
Brookhaven is the U.S. host laboratory for the ATLAS collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland. Our scientists play key roles in ATLAS computing, data analysis, and detector performance as the LHC collides protons at ever-increasing energies to hunt for the Higgs boson and supersymmetric particles—leading candidates for dark matter and hidden symmetries.
Brookhaven scientists are a driving force in the conceptual development of a muon collider—a potential next-generation accelerator that would pursue a precise understanding of physics and early-universe symmetries beyond the Standard Model.
Intensity Frontier
Building on decades of researching the physics of neutrinos—uncharged elementary particles that transform between three types—Brookhaven physicists are active partners in the Daya Bay Neutrino Experiment in China, which measures the last unknown parameter related to these oscillations. In addition to coordinating detector engineering efforts and developing software and analysis techniques, Brookhaven scientists perfected the “recipe” for the chemically stable liquid that fills part of Daya Bay’s detectors.
Brookhaven researchers also play leading roles in planning, designing, and operating the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE), which will explore the role neutrinos might have played in establishing the asymmetry between matter and antimatter in our universe.
Cosmology Frontier
Brookhaven is leading the development of a multi-gigapixel camera sensor for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), a huge instrument in Chile designed to image the entire visible southern sky. Based on the data collected from LSST and precursor studies, researchers will help determine the dark matter distribution in the universe and the nature of dark energy—the mysterious force behind the accelerating expansion of the universe.
As part of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) collaboration, Brookhaven scientists use the terapixel night sky image produced by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescope to create a 3-D map of the universe. This map, which is reconstructed by measuring the light given off from extremely distant luminous red galaxies and quasars, will accelerate the hunt for dark energy.
