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Brookhaven National Laboratory

Motto	"Passion for discovery"
Established	1947
Research Type	Nuclear physics, material physics and chemistry, environmental and biological research
Budget	US$510 million (2007)
Staff	3,000
Location	Upton, New York
Campus	21 km² (5265 acres)
Operating Agency	Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC
Website	www.bnl.gov

Aerial view of Brookhaven National Laboratory. The RHIC ring is visible in the background.

Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), is a United States national laboratory located in Upton, New York on Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base. Its name stems from its location in the greater area of the Town of Brookhaven.

Operation

Brookhaven, which originally was owned by the Atomic Energy Commission, is now owned by the Commission's successor, the United States Department of Energy, which subcontracts the actual research and operation to universities and research organizations. It is currently operated by Brookhaven Science Associates LLC, which is an equal partnership of Stony Brook University and Battelle Memorial Institute. It was operated by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), from 1947 until 1998 when Associated lost the contract in the wake of a scandal when tritium leaked into the Long Island Central Pine Barrens groundwater on which it sits.^[1]

Co-located with the laboratory is the Upton, New York forecast office of the National Weather Service.

BNL is staffed by approximately 3,000 scientists, engineers, technicians, and support personnel, and hosts 4,000 guest investigators every year. Discoveries made at the lab have won six Nobel Prizes.

The laboratory has its own police station, fire department, and postal code (11973). In total, the lab spans a 5,265-acre (21 km²) area.

Major programs

Although originally conceived as a nuclear research facility, its mission has greatly expanded. Its foci are now:

• Nuclear and high-energy physics^[2]
• Physics and chemistry of materials ^[3]
• Environmental^[4] and energy research^[5]
• Nonproliferation^[6]
• Neurosciences and medical imaging^[7]
• Structural biology^[8]

Cancelled programs

• Rare Symmetry Violating Processes

Major facilities

• Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) (until 2008 the world's biggest particle accelerator) that was designed to research quark-gluon plasma^[9]
• Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) for study nanoscale materials^[10]
• National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) (the lab's most popular machine which is said to have attracted more researchers in the world than any other machine)^[11]
• Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (particle accelerator that was used in three of the lab's Nobel prize research)^[12]
• Accelerator Test Facility (generates, accelerates and monitors particle beams)^[13]
• Tandem Van de Graaff (once the world's largest electrostatic accelerator)^[14]

Beamline at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Off site contributions

It is a contributing partner to ATLAS experiment, one of the four detectors to be located at a new powerful nuclear accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It is currently under construction near Geneva, Switzerland.

Brookhaven is also responsible for the design of the SNS accumulator ring in partnership with Spallation Neutron Source in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Visitation

The lab is open to the public on Sundays during the summer for tours and special programs, helping its connection with the surrounding community. The program is referred to as 'Summer Sundays' and takes place from mid-July to mid-August. It features, most notably, a science show and a tour of the facilities. The laboratory also hosts science fairs, science bowls, and robotics competitions for schools in the surrounding area. Per year the Lab estimates that it enhances the science education of roughly 24,000 kindergarten to 12th grade LI students, more than 100 undergraduates, and 550 teachers from across the nation.

Nobel Prizes

Nobel Prize in Physics

• 1957 - Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee - parity laws ^[15]
• 1976 - Samuel C. C. Ting - Psi particle^[16]
• 1980 - James Cronin and Val Logsdon Fitch - CP-violation^[17]
• 1988 - Leon M. Lederman, Melvin Schwartz, Jack Steinberger - ^[18] - Neutrino
• 2002 - Raymond Davis, Jr. - Neutrino^[19]

Nobel Prize in Chemistry

• 2003 - Roderick MacKinnon - Ion channel^[20]

See also

• Tennis for Two ^[21][22]

References

• "Dr. Strangelet or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Big Bang"

External links

• Brookhaven National Lab Official Website
• Physics Today: DOE Shuts Brookhaven Lab’s HFBR in a Triumph of Politics Over Science
  • Summer Sundays 2005 tour at Brookhaven National Laboratory
• Annotated bibliography for Brookhaven Laboratory from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
• Headlines

Coordinates: 40°52′24″N 72°52′19″W / 40.873346°N 72.872057°W / 40.873346; -72.872057

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