This week, we reached a major milestone in transforming the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) into the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC): moving the first cryostat.
This giant piece of scientific instrumentation acts like an ultra-cold thermos for superconducting magnets. ❄️🧲
We relocated the cryostat from its original location in the RHIC tunnel to a new position along the ring, where it will become part of a “bypass” in the EIC. By reconfiguring RHIC’s components, we’re efficiently building a next-generation discovery machine. ⚛️
Photos by David Rahner/Brookhaven National Laboratory
#ElectronIonCollider #RHIC #science #BrookhavenLab #physics
From the #RHIC archives: Nov. 6, 1997
A six-ton, $10-million piece of scientific equipment arrived at Brookhaven Lab today, ready to take its place in the atom smasher now under construction. Called a time projection chamber (TPC), the device measures nearly 14 feet long and 13.5 feet wide.
The TPC arrived at 8:30 a.m. on a @usairforce cargo plane at Gabreski Airport in Westhampton, New York. It was then transported to the Lab aboard a flatbed truck and arrived mid-afternoon. Over the next year, it will be tested and installed at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) as part of a house-sized experiment called STAR, which acts like a 3D camera for subatomic particles.
The TPC was shipped to Brookhaven from @berkeleylab in California, where it was designed and built over four years by more than 90 people from nine institutions.
Read the original press release at the link in our bio.
Photos by Brookhaven National Laboratory
#BrookhavenLab #science #history #physics
Size matters for #bioenergy crops. 🌱
By understanding how plant genes and proteins work, biologists are working to develop bioenergy crops that grow tall and thrive on iron-deficient, marginal land.
Our researchers recently discovered one protein called "PtrbHLH011" plays a key role in three biological processes in poplar plants: iron deficiency responses, cell wall biosynthesis, and the synthesis of disease-fighting molecules.
By deactivating the PtrbHLH011 gene, the team grew extra-large plants that had more lignin content in their stems and more iron in their leaves.
Lignin is a rigid cell wall component that can be used to produce valuable bioproducts with industrial applications, like cement and adhesives. Iron is necessary ingredient for plants to convert sunlight into chemical energy that powers growth.
Photo: Brookhaven Lab biologists Meng Xie (left) and Yuqiu Dai (right) used poplar plants, like those pictured here at Brookhaven's greenhouse, to study PtrbHLH011, a protein that plays a key role in poplar's iron deficiency responses, cell wall biosynthesis, and production of disease-fighting molecules. (Timothy Kuhn/Brookhaven National Laboratory)
#BrookhavenLab #science #biology #plants #agriculture
Congratulations to our six scientists who received Early Career Research Awards from the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. 👏
The awards provide significant funding for research on particle accelerators and detectors, artificial intelligence, and quantum materials.
We can't wait to see what discoveries they'll make with this support at the outset of their careers, when many scientists do their most formative work.
Meet the awardees:
1. Accelerator physicist Aamna Khan is researching ways to maximize the performance of #NSLSII and other powerful light sources. Photo: David Rahner/Brookhaven National Laboratory
2. Accelerator physicist Kiel Hock is exploring strategies to maintain the polarization of helium-3 nuclei at the #ElectronIonCollider. Photo: David Rahner/Brookhaven National Laboratory
3. Physicist Albert Liu is developing new techniques for exploring the properties of quantum materials. Photo: Timothy Kuhn/Brookhaven National Laboratory
4. Physicist Stefania Stucci is developing high-performance sensors for particle detectors. Photo: Kevin Coughlin/Brookhaven National Laboratory
5. Computational condensed matter physicist Niraj Aryal conducts work with supercomputers to discover new quantum materials. Photo: Kevin Coughlin/Brookhaven National Laboratory
6. Experimental particle physicist Syed Haider Abidi uses AI to improve studies at the @atlasexperiment and better understand the Higgs boson. Photo: Punit Sharma
Learn more about the awarded projects at the link in our bio.
#BrookhavenLab #science #EarlyCareerAward
The ATLAS Experiment at CERN is getting ready for the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider, which will increase the collision rate by a factor of five.
These new silicon staves are for the Inner Tracker (ITk), a next-generation particle detector that is designed to cope with the much higher collision rate. The ITk will live inside the heart of the ATLAS experiment and record the properties of particles created during the high energy collisions.
This new batch of staves just arrived from Brookhaven National Laboratory in the United States, where they were assembled and tested, and includes contributions from multiple institutions working on the ITk. #physics #particlephysics #hilumilhc #cern #atlasexperiment
And the award goes to the muon! 🏆
The 2026 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics recognized three generations of the Muon g-2 experiment, which provided the world’s most precise measurement to date of the muon. The experiment began at @CERN in the 1970s, shifted to @BrookhavenLab in the 1990s and concluded at Fermilab with final publication in 2025.
These Muon g‑2 experiments pushed the limits of precision to measure the muon’s magnetic moment with ever-increasing precision. Even the smallest discrepancy from expectations could reveal brand‑new physics beyond the Standard Model.
In 2025, the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab announced the most precise measurement of the muon’s magnetic moment ever made.
Fermilab scientist Chris Polly was among the members of the scientific collaborations who accepted the prize. Others included: Bradley Lee Roberts of Boston University, William M. Morse of Brookhaven National Laboratory and David Hertzog of the University of Washington. The prize was presented at a ceremony at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California, on Saturday, April 18, 2026.
Learn more at the link in our bio.
📸: Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize
#gminus2 #BreakthroughPrize #BrookhavenLab #Fermilab #CERN #muon #physics #particlephysics
Congratulations to the Muon g‑2 collaborations! 🏆
A tiny elementary particle called the muon has won a big prize, the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.
Three generations of the Muon #gminus2 experiment — beginning @CERN , advancing @BrookhavenLab , and culminating at Fermilab — were honored with this award, recognizing decades of groundbreaking precision physics.
The three generations of Muon g-2 experiments were designed to measure the magnetic moment of the muon with ever-increasing precision, exploring the quantum realm where particles briefly appear and vanish — and where even tiny deviations could point to entirely new laws of nature outside of the current Standard Model of Particle Physics.
The latest and most precise measurement of the muon’s magnetic moment was announced by Fermilab in 2025.
Read more at the link in our bio.
📸: Fermilab, Brookhaven National Laboratory, CERN
#gminus2 #BreakthroughPrize #BrookhavenLab #Fermilab #CERN #muon #physics #particlephysics
Congratulations to the Muon g-2 Collaboration at CERN, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Fermilab, winners of the 2026 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, for multi-decade, groundbreaking contributions to the measurement of the muon’s anomalous magnetic moment, pushing the boundaries of experimental precision and igniting a new era in the quest for physics beyond the Standard Model.
@fermilab@CERN@brookhavenlab
Watch the premiere on Sunday, April 26 at 3 PM Eastern – link in bio!
The @rubin_observatory has issued its first scientific alerts, marking a historic milestone in astrophysics. Expected to increase to seven million alerts per night, these first alerts start a new era of dynamic, real-time observation of the night sky.
Among the first alerts are detections of supernovae, variable stars, active galactic nuclei, and asteroids.
With Rubin's alerts, scientists will have a greater ability to catch supernovae in their earliest moments, discover and track asteroids to assess potential threats to Earth, and spot rare interstellar objects as they race through the Solar System.
Learn more and read the full press release from the Rubin Observatory at the link in our bio.
Photo: The sky over NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory glitters like no other place on Earth. Rubin sits high on Cerro Pachón in Chile, where the air is dry, the skies are dark and clear, and the Milky Way shines in all its glory. Credit: NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA/W. O'Mullane
#space #telescope #astrophysics #brookhavenlab #science
During the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider's (RHIC) STAR collaboration meeting earlier this month, members gathered in front of the STAR detector one final time before it is disassembled and the collider is transformed into the #ElectronIonCollider.
#RHIC's operations have come to an end, but its science lives on — with years of data analysis and discoveries still ahead.
Photo by Kevin Coughlin/Brookhaven National Laboratory
#BrookhavenLab #science #physics
Meet Preetha Sarkar, a research associate at our Center for Functional Nanomaterials. She recently took first place in our research SLAM and will be representing Brookhaven Lab in the national competition on April 15.
The SLAM challenges early career researchers to make their science understandable to people of different backgrounds. Participants gave three-minute talks on their research, and a panel of judges from science and communications fields selected the winners.
Sarkar highlighted her research on superconductors — materials that, at ultra-cold temperatures, conduct electricity without losing any energy. These materials can be used in "qubit" memory units for quantum computers.
The new qubits Sarkar is making will operate at temperatures an order of magnitude higher than the others. They will require far less complicated cooling systems, can retain information longer, and could be manufactured with techniques already used by the silicon industry.
"A quantum revolution is approaching," Sarkar said. "When it arrives, how we exploit it, and the benefits we yield, will all depend on the quality of qubits we create."
Learn more about Sarkar and the National Lab Research SLAM, and listen to all the presentations, at the link in our bio.
Photos by Kevin Coughlin/Brookhaven National Laboratory
#BrookhavenLab #CFNatBrookhaven #NationalLabSLAM #NLSLAM26 #quantum
We asked people involved in research at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider to reflect on the end of #RHIC's operations.
Here are personal accounts from Megan Connors and Jin Huang. Read more reflections at the link in our bio.
Megan Connors, Georgia State University physicist and co-spokesperson for the sPHENIX Collaboration: “I joined the PHENIX experiment as a graduate student 20 years ago. The amount of physics RHIC’s versatility has been able to deliver over that period of time, as well as the number of scientists trained, is incredible. I am extremely proud to be a part of the RHIC program and am looking forward to the rich physics results yet to come, especially from the recently collected sPHENIX data.”
Jin Huang, Brookhaven Lab physicist and co-spokesperson for the sPHENIX Collaboration: “The evolution of RHIC has been nothing short of extraordinary. From its groundbreaking discoveries in creating and characterizing the quark-gluon plasma to its role in nurturing talent across the globe, RHIC has not only expanded the frontiers of nuclear science but also cultivated a deep, collaborative spirit among researchers.”
Photo: Megan Connors and Jin Huang at RHIC's sPHENIX detector, 2025. (David Rahner/Brookhaven National Laboratory)
#BrookhavenLab #Physics #Science #ScientistsOfInstagram
