Title:
The EIC Science, Prospects and Possibilities

Abstract:
In July 2018 the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, through their Consensus Report declared that the science of the proposed Electron Ion Collider (EIC) was compelling, fundamental and timely. The DOE office of Science followed up on the realization of the EIC and as a result the collider is almost ready to be constructed at BNL - jointly by BNL-Jefferson Lab working as partners. An international  detector collaboration (ePIC) has been formed to get detector constructed and ready for collisions by early 2030’s. In this talk, I will review  the principle pillars of the EIC science: understanding the origin of spin and mass of the proton and also, imaging the quark gluon structure and their dynamics in the protons and in nuclei at all energies available at the EIC. Part of the physics program also includes searching for a novel state of gluonic matter which QCD predicts but has not been unambiguously demonstrated to exist.  I will review the essential physics of the EIC and then conclude with the prospects of science at the EIC beyond those basic science drivers, and comment on possibility of a second detector to be built in a few years into the EIC operation.