{"id":593789,"date":"2026-04-19T14:36:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T14:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/593789\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T14:36:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T14:36:08","slug":"bnl-scientist-wins-prestigious-breakthrough-prize-in-physics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/593789\/","title":{"rendered":"BNL scientist wins prestigious Breakthrough Prize in Physics"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Brookhaven National Laboratory<\/a>\u00a0physicist\u00a0received one of science\u2019s most prestigious honors Saturday\u00a0for groundbreaking research\u00a0by a team studying an obscure subatomic particle\u00a0and its effect on the universe.<\/p>\n

William Morse of the Upton lab and three other\u00a0scientists\u00a0\u2014 Boston University physicist Bradley Lee Roberts<\/a>,\u00a0Chris Polly of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory\u00a0in Illinois and David Hertzog of the University of Washington\u00a0\u2014 were awarded\u00a0the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics on Saturday during a ceremony\u00a0in Santa Monica, California. The prize was\u00a0created in 2012 by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs including\u00a0Sergey Brin of Alphabet\u00a0and Mark Zuckerberg\u00a0of Meta.<\/p>\n

The ceremony, marketed as the “Oscars of Science,” drew a number of high-profile celebrities, according to a Deadline report<\/a>. The guests included Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Robert Downey Jr., Ben Affleck and Octavia Spencer, according to the Hollywood trade.<\/p>\n

Morse, 78, of East Patchogue, will receive a share of a\u00a0$3 million prize with dozens or possibly hundreds of other scientists involved in the research, Brookhaven lab\u00a0officials said.<\/p>\n

Morse and the others are credited with significant scientific\u00a0advances in\u00a0a quest begun in Europe six decades ago to fine-tune physicists\u2019 understanding of the muon, an enigmatic particle whose wobbly motion helps to explain cosmic anomalies such as Mercury\u2019s erratic orbit\u00a0around the sun.<\/p>\n

The research led Morse and the Brookhaven lab at one point to shut down William Floyd Parkway<\/a> to carry a 17-ton superconducting magnet\u00a0more than 3,000 miles by truck and barge to Illinois.<\/p>\n

‘The top of the top’<\/p>\n

In a phone interview, Morse said it was “amazing” that he and his colleagues\u00a0had been recognized. Though the Breakthrough Prize is relatively new, he said, the award “is the top of the top.”<\/p>\n

In a statement, BNL\u00a0interim director John Hill said Morse’s muon experiments were “a testament to the lab\u2019s world-class accelerator facilities and to the expertise and teamwork of the more than 100 engineers, technicians\u00a0and physicists who made it possible.”<\/p>\n

Hill added that muon research in Brookhaven and at other institutions has\u00a0\u201cinspired generations of physicists to explore the mysteries of our universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

The muon, pronounced “myu-ahn,” was discovered in 1936 and helped scientists better understand why some objects, like Mercury, don’t conform to established scientific principles such as gravity.<\/p>\n

Experiments\u00a0between\u00a01959 and\u00a01979 at the\u00a0European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, in Switzerland, advanced scientists’ knowledge of the particles\u00a0but left some questions unanswered.<\/p>\n

Morse said he got involved in 1989, enticed by the challenge of making discoveries that can’t be explained by traditional science \u2014 an endeavor known as “new physics.”<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mathematics is just beautiful,” Morse said.\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019re trying to … see if there is new physics out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working with\u00a0Roberts, who goes by Lee, and the late Vernon Hughes of Yale University, Morse and a\u00a0BNL team beamed muons into a magnetic ring to measure how much the rapidly spinning particles began to “precess,” or wobble.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even after publishing results of their findings in 2001, 2002 and 2004, Morse said his team still had questions. But the Fermi lab\u00a0had a high-intensity muon beam they thought could\u00a0help, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Journey to the Midwest<\/p>\n

Around midnight one day in summer\u00a02013, state and Suffolk County\u00a0police closed off the southbound William Floyd Parkway\u00a0as Morse and his team carried the\u00a0disassembled, $25 million electromagnet\u00a0on trucks to\u00a0the Smith Point Marina.<\/p>\n

A barge carried the magnet from Smith Point\u00a0to Mississippi, then\u00a0hundreds more miles up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers to the Fermi lab, Morse said.<\/p>\n

Closing the parkway\u00a0was chosen after using a helicopter was ruled out, Morse said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked [the helicopter pilot], ‘What happens if you have a problem?’ and he said, ‘We drop the load,'” Morse said. “We said, ‘Thank you very much.’\u201d<\/p>\n

The truck-and-barge journey took about three months, Morse said, adding it took several years to reassemble the magnet in Illinois and resume experiments.<\/p>\n

But it was worth it: Fermi’s testing confirmed the results of Brookhaven’s earlier experiments, but with even greater accuracy, Morse\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

And yet in spite of the award, more work remains, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe theorists\u00a0say they need another two or three years of calculations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Carl<\/p>\n

\n\tCarl MacGowan is a Long Island native who covers Brookhaven Town after having previously covered Smithtown, Suffolk County courts and numerous spot news and feature stories over his 20-plus year career at Newsday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Brookhaven National Laboratory\u00a0physicist\u00a0received one of science\u2019s most prestigious honors Saturday\u00a0for groundbreaking research\u00a0by a team studying an obscure…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[199,79],"class_list":["post-593789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-physics","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}