A smashing success: Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider wraps up final collisions

Just after 9 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 6, 2026, final beams of oxygen ions-oxygen atoms stripped of their electrons-circulated through the twin 2.4-mile-circumference rings of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and crashed into one another at nearly the speed of light inside the collider's two house-sized particle detectors, STAR and sPHENIX. RHIC, a nuclear physics research facility at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has been smashing atoms since ...