What are some examples of science done at Brookhaven?
The following are just a few examples — Radioactive isotopes pioneered at Brookhaven’s linear accelerator, called “BLIP”, are used in many types of medical procedures for the diagnosis and therapy of diseases. Technetium 99m is used to assess heart disease, Thallium-201 for heart stress tests, and Tin-117m for significantly reducing the pain from bone tumors arising from metastases from lung, prostate, and other cancers. The Alternating Gradient Synchrotron Booster, used primarily to inject particles into the AGS and eventually to the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider for high energy and nuclear physics experiments, is also used for radiobiological research. Future space travelers will be exposed to very high energy, massive nuclei such as iron in cosmic rays beyond the earth’s magnetic field. The biological effects of such particles are quantitatively unknown, but must be determined so that NASA engineers may design appropriate shielding. NASA-supported scientists come to the AGS to do
