BNL | Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)

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Electron-Ion Collider

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Time Projection Chamber Installed at sPHENIX

The gas-filled detector is one of many components that nuclear physicists will use to glean more information about the quark-gluon plasma.
Celebrating the Upcoming sPHENIX Detector

Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, Director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, helped Brookhaven Lab celebrate the fast-approaching debut of the sPHENIX detector.

RHIC Physics

RHIC is the first machine in the world capable of colliding ions as heavy as gold.

The Spin Puzzle

RHIC is the world's only machine capable of colliding beams of polarized protons to investigate the 'missing' spin of the proton.

Accelerator Science

Before high-speed packets of heavy ions can be brought into collisions with one another, they first travel through a chain of smaller particle accelerators.

An Educational Pipeline

Large-scale physics facilities like RHIC play a significant role in training the next generation of physicists.

Matter at the Dawn of Time

Physicist Paul Sorensen describes discoveries made at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider where conditions similar to what the universe may have looked like in the first microseconds after its birth are created.

Breakthrough: RHIC Explores Matter at the Dawn of Time

April 24, 2012

(Separate print interview at http://energy.gov/articles/lab-breakthrough-exploring-matter-dawn-time). Physicist Paul Sorensen describes discoveries made at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a particle accelerator at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory. At RHIC, scientists from around the world study what the universe may have looked like in the first microseconds after its birth, helping us to understand more about why the physical world works the way it does -- from the smallest particles to the largest stars.

Electron-Ion Collider

A breakthrough particle accelerator based on RHIC infrastructure will collide electrons with heavy ions or protons at nearly the speed of light to create rapid-fire, high-resolution “snapshots” of the force binding all visible matter. Read more...