Brookhaven National Laboratory

The Brookhaven National Laboratory ( BNL ) is one of the ten major of the U.S. government ( the United States Department of Energy) maintained research centers. It is located in Upton, Town of Brookhaven, on Long Iceland in the U.S. state of New York.

The research center was founded in 1947 on the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base. It was originally owned by the United States Atomic Energy Commission, and is now its successor, the U.S. Department of Energy, affiliated. Work there over 3,000 permanent staff scientists, engineers and technicians. Each year, another 4,000 guest researchers.

In addition to application- oriented issues such as the exploration of functional nanomaterials, the laboratory is devoted mainly to basic research in physics, including in the field of nuclear and elementary particle physics and molecular biology. For several, partially interconnected particle accelerators are available:

• Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider ( RHIC ),
• Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS )
• Another synchrotron
• Two cyclotrons for the production of radioactive substances.

Discoveries that were made at the center, leading to a total of six Nobel Prizes. For example, discovered in 1974 a group led by Samuel Chao Chung Ting, the J / ψ meson, which points to the existence of the charm quark, for which Ting was awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physics.

In the 1990s there was a nuclear accident, arrived at the tritium into the groundwater.