36
posted ago by Bibloop ago by Bibloop +36 / -0

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8662513,-72.8709755,1402m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu

Summary from the article:

https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/02/12/particle-accelerator-new-york

Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, NY in home to Electron-Ion Collider [EIC], which will investigate what’s inside two subatomic particles: protons and neutrons.

Brookhaven’s website describes this instrument as “a machine that will unlock the secrets of the strongest force in nature.” It’s essentially an electron microscope that shoots electrons at protons and neutrons in order to measure them, says Paul Dabbar, undersecretary for science at the Department of Energy.

“You need to accelerate it to very high levels of energy in order to basically shoot it, to do the mapping a little bit like an MRI or a CT scan for the inner workings of matter,” he explains.

The electron beam is accelerated very fast in a circle, Dabbar says.

“We will generate an electron beam and accelerate it to very, very close to the speed of light,” he says. “We basically circle around them imparting energy into the electron beam until it reaches the level that we want it so that we can image the protons and neutrons.”

Scientists can’t accelerate it exactly to the speed of light because as any piece of matter approaches that speed, its mass changes, Dabbar says.

“That mass change makes it increasingly hard to get faster and faster,” he says. “And as you reach the speed of light, you reach an infinite amount of energy needed to get to that last step, and therefore, we cannot do that.” "This schematic shows how the EIC will fit within the tunnel of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC, background photo), reusing essential infrastructure and key components of RHIC," according to the U.S. Department of Energy. (Courtesy of Brookhaven National Laboratory/DOE)

“So first of all, one of the advantages of this particular site and building it here is that we're actually using some existing collider infrastructure. There is a collider at Brookhaven National Lab right now called RHIC, which is a relativistic hadron collider. So there's already a loop there that it was accelerating other types of ions. There was an accelerator infrastructure [already] there. And so we're going to finish that mission in terms of imaging for nuclear physics in 2024.