Recombinant Science: The Birth of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (431st Brookhaven Lecture)

Conference · Wed Dec 12 04:00:00 EST 2007

OSTI ID:1005216

Crease, Robert P. ^[1]

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1. Stony Brook Univ., NY (United States). Dept. of Philosophy

As part of the celebration of Brookhaven Lab's 60th anniversary, Robert P. Crease, the Chair of the Philosophy Department at Stony Brook University and BNL's historian, will present the second of two talks on the Lab's history. In "Recombinant Science: The Birth of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider," Dr. Crease will focus on the creation of the world's most powerful colliding accelerator for nuclear physics. Known as RHIC, the collider, as Dr. Crease will recount, was formally proposed in 1984, received initial construction funding from the U.S. Department of Energy in 1991, and started operating in 2000. In 2005, the discovery at RHIC of the world's most perfect liquid, a state of matter that last existed just moments after the Big Bang, was announced, and, since then, this perfect liquid of quarks and gluons has been the subject of intense study.

• Research Organization: Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-98CH10886
• OSTI ID: 1005216
• Report Number(s): BNL--83206-2007-CP
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS
73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS
ACCELERATORS
BNL
CONSTRUCTION
GLUONS
HEAVY IONS
NUCLEAR PHYSICS
QUARKS