In this episode of Micro Journeys, host Daniel Marrujo takes listeners on a rare, behind-the-scenes journey inside Brookhaven National Laboratory, a 5,300-acre federal research facility located in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. Joined by Daniel Marx, Accelerator Physicist, and Alex Jentsch, Associate Staff Scientist, Daniel steps inside one of the most secured and scientifically significant facilities in the United States. From navigating multiple layers of security and suiting up in full construction gear, to walking the tunnels of a machine that has operated for 25 years, this episode immerses listeners in the sights, sounds, and scale of cutting-edge nuclear physics research happening right now on American soil.
At the heart of this episode is one of the most profound open questions in all of science: what actually makes up a proton? Despite decades of research, scientists can only account for roughly 1% of the proton’s total mass through the quarks that compose it. The remaining 99% — driven by the dynamic interactions between quarks and gluons — remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of modern physics. To answer it, Brookhaven is in the middle of a decade-long transformation, converting its existing Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider into the Electron Ion Collider (EIC) , a first-of-its-kind machine designed to take three-dimensional snapshots of the internal structure of protons and atomic nuclei.
The EIC represents the answer — a facility built with unprecedented flexibility, precision down to tens of microns, a detector the size of a three-story building, and the integration of artificial intelligence through Project Genesis to accelerate data analysis and protect the machine, bringing humanity closer to understanding the fundamental building blocks of all matter.