This Podcast Was Recorded Inside a Particle Collider

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’re taking a field trip to the U.S.’s only particle collider, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), housed at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Staff scientist Alex Jentsch takes listeners through some basic terminology and interconnected technologies that help Brookhaven researchers probe questions about our unseen universe. The RHIC is winding down in preparation for the new Electron-Ion Collider, which could help us discover the secrets of the “glue” that holds visible matter together. Be sure to head over to our YouTube account to see the video version of this podcast, shot on-site at Brookhaven National Laboratory! Recommended reading: Who Will Build the Next Giant Particle Collider? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/who-will-build-the-next-giant-particle-collider/ Supersymmetry Washes Out at the Large Hadron Collider https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/supersymmetrys-long-fall-from-grace/ Physicists Are Closer Than Ever to Solving the Puzzle of the Ghostly Neutrino’s Mass https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/neutrino-mass-mystery-shrinks-with-latest-katrin-results/ Tell us what you think! Take our survey for the chance to win some SciAm swag! http://sciencequickly.com/survey E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:53.3	Today we're taking you on another one of our Friday fascination field trips with an auditory journey to Brookhaven National Laboratory.
1:00.8	This Long Island facility boasts seven Nobel Prize winning discoveries and more than 70 years of groundbreaking research into energy and the environment.
1:10.1	Earlier this year, the science
1:11.4	quickly team visited Brookhaven to get a look at its relativistic heavy ion collider, or Rick,
1:16.8	which has been helping scientists study subatomic particles since 2000. Rick's 25th year of
1:22.3	operations is set to be its last, but only because something new is on the horizon. The electron ion collider,
1:29.4	or EIC, which scientists hope can reveal the secrets of the glue that binds together the
1:34.8	building blocks of visible matter. To guide us through these weighty subatomic topics, I chatted
1:40.1	with Brookhaven's own Alex Yench. You'll notice that this episode's audio quality is lower than usual, but that's because
1:46.6	we were hanging out next to giant science machines.
1:49.7	If you want to see those incredible instruments for yourself and get access to an extended
1:53.9	version of my conversation with Alex, check out our YouTube channel for a video edition
1:58.2	of today's episode.
	...

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