Looking Toward the Future
Science is about asking big questions, figuring out the answers, and then tackling the new questions that arise. With this process—driven by Brookhaven Lab's world-class staff and collaborators, as well as the core capabilities and expertise the Lab developed in the past 75 years—Brookhaven continues to expand the frontiers of scientific discovery.
Today and in the years ahead, these are the areas where Brookhaven strives to make the world a better place.
Securing a Sustainable Future
Brookhaven is helping the Nation reach a net-zero carbon economy. Scientists leverage the Lab’s world-leading materials science and chemistry research facilities to develop clean energy solutions, such as biofuels, green catalysts for energy conversion, and grid-scale energy storage. The Lab’s complementary climate research investigates the atmosphere at unprecedented scales, gathering data that will improve climate models and advance scientists’ understanding of complex environmental systems. Learn more about Brookhaven’s clean energy and climate research.
The Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC (STAR) is a detector which specializes in tracking the thousands of particles produced by each ion collision at RHIC.
Exploring the Building Blocks of Matter
For a better future, Brookhaven Lab is investigating the past—as far back as time, as we know it, goes. Physicists at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) recreate the conditions of the early universe—just microseconds after the Big Bang—to understand how fundamental forces and particles give shape to all of today’s visible matter. And in the years ahead, Brookhaven Lab, in collaboration with Jefferson Lab, will build a new collider: the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). The EIC will unlock the secrets of the strongest force in nature, in addition to triggering technological breakthroughs with broad-ranging impact from human health to national challenges. Learn more about Brookhaven’s nuclear physics research.
Entering the Next Generation of Artificial Intelligence
Modern scientific experiments are becoming increasingly complex, generating enormous datasets and requiring rapid decision making. To overcome these challenges, researchers at Brookhaven Lab are developing new artificial intelligence (AI) techniques that automate experiments, using capabilities like machine learning to drive experiments more efficiently. Looking toward the next generation of AI, Brookhaven is also creating new research facilities and capabilities that push AI beyond pure automation and towards collaboration with scientists, enabling more accurate experiments. Learn more about Brookhaven’s artificial intelligence research.
Quantum Communication. Brookhaven Lab researchers with an experimental optical system that harnesses a phenomenon known as quantum entanglement to “teleport” quantum information from one place to another over long distances without signal degradation.
Transforming Technology with Quantum Mechanics
Brookhaven Lab is executing a cross-disciplinary strategy to harness quantum effects in physics for advanced computing, communications, and fundamental science. From developing the quantum internet to integrating quantum capabilities into existing world-class facilities, quantum is at the forefront of all research areas at Brookhaven Lab. Brookhaven also leads one of the five National Quantum Information Science Research Centers, the Co-Design Center for Quantum Advantage. Learn more about Brookhaven’s quantum information science and technology research.
Accelerating Disease Treatment
Imagine a world where cancer can be treated without harming healthy tissue. In pursuit of this goal, researchers at Brookhaven Lab, in collaboration with Oak Ridge and Los Alamos national labs, are developing methods to produce actinium-225, a medical isotope that has shown promise in treating late-stage prostate cancer. Actinium-225 is one of many isotopes that can be produced at the Brookhaven Linac Isotope Producer. These isotopes, which are commercially unavailable, have widespread applications in medicine, from disease diagnosis to treatment, as well as in national security. Learn more about Brookhaven’s research in medical isotopes.
Brookhaven Lab is strongly engaged in the design, construction and planning for the future operation and analysis of data from the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment.
Investigating the Fabric of Space and Time
Brookhaven is building advanced detectors and developing other technologies for the next generation of particle physics experiments, such as the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. The Lab collaborates on leading experiments around the world that seek to answer the most pressing questions about the universe, such as the behavior of ghost-like particles called neutrinos and the nature of dark matter. Many of these experiments investigate the Standard Model—the theory that describes the relationship between the fundamental forces of nature and elementary particles—and search for new physics that may lay beyond it. Learn more about Brookhaven’s high energy physics research.
