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.
What You'll Discover in This Episode
[04:43] — Why scientists believe only 1% of what makes up a proton is currently understood, and what the remaining 99% could reveal about the mass of all matter in the universe.
[08:49] — Alex Jentsch breaks down how E=MC² is not just a famous equation but a living, unresolved mystery at the subatomic level — and why the proton's mass cannot be explained by its quarks alone.
[15:07] — Daniel Marx introduces listeners to the 25-year-old the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the decade-long construction plan to convert it into the Electron Ion Collider, including what stays, what gets torn out, and why the precision required is measured in millionths of a meter.
[28:55] — Alex Jentsch reveals how the EIC's detector — essentially a three-story digital camera — captures billions of particle collisions per run, and why reconstructing a single image of a nucleus is like having 10,000 people each photograph an elephant with a one-pixel camera.
[33:41] — How Project Genesis, the Department of Energy's artificial intelligence initiative, is being integrated into the EIC to filter data, recognize new patterns, predict machine failures, and reduce costly downtime — supercharging the speed of scientific discovery.
[32:21] — Why building the EIC is not just a physics problem — it takes software engineers, surveyors, technicians, procurement specialists, and computing infrastructure experts, making this one of the most interdisciplinary scientific endeavors in American history.
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