Black Mesa Research Facility
 Logo used from 1991 to 2000, up until its dissolution. | |
 The above-ground section of the facility, with most of it's square footage being underground. | |
| Privately-held company | |
| Industry | Advanced Physics |
| Fate | Defunct; Resonance Cascade |
| Founded | January 11, 1945 |
| Founder | |
| Defunct | December 12, 2000 |
| Headquarters | Black Mesa, New Mexico, United States of America |
Key people | |
 US$383.3 billion (2000) | |
|
US$235.3 billion (2000) | |
| Total assets |
US$3.5 trillion (2000) |
Number of employees |
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| Divisions |
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| Subsidiaries | |
Black Mesa Research Facility (or officially; the Black Mesa Advanced Research Facility, and formerly; Black Mesa Research Foundation (1945–1956)) was an American information, data, advanced physics and federally funded research and development center in Black Mesa, New Mexico, United States. Founded in 1945, the laboratory was owned by private holder, Wallace Breen, who was also the founder of Black Mesa in 1945, and was administered by University of New Mexico's Physics Institute. While the facility ostensibly conducts military-industrial research, its secret experiments into teleportation have caused it to make contact with the alien world of Xen, and its scientists covertly studied its life-forms and materials. In a catastrophic event known as the Black Mesa Incident, the anti-mass spectrometer experiment 12-06-2001 conducted on Xen Crystal Sample GG-3883, caused a resonance cascade that caused the destruction of the facility before the destruction of the site by a nuclear weapon on 7 December 2000.
The science foundation was created between Wallace Breen, Jonathan Whitehead, and a couple other colleagues at the University of New Mexico's Physics Institute, who began experimenting with advanced physics after receiving governmental support by the team behind the Manhattan Project, and the (at the time) currently active Nuclear Weapons Program in the United States. Breen and Whitehead had temporary positions in the Nuclear Weapons program, which assisted in their high-ranking positions in the Black Mesa Research Foundation as they held high ranks in the team given to them by unknown benefactors that Wallace Breen has never described, a so called G-Man. In the middle of the 20th century, Black Mesa had purchased the Black Mesa Facility from the United States government as it had been abandoned due to issues with water-leakage, and with the prior experience with nuclear weapons by Breen and Whitehead, were given limited autonomy with the nuclear weapons located at the site, forcing them to disassemble the nuclear weapons if they were to hold such material.
In the late 20th century, Black Mesa had grown a positive reception in the Physics & Science field, having contributed much to the advancement of both fields through their teleportation technology that they had mastered through out the 60s and 70s, being one of the main rivals against former Research and Development company, Aperture Science, who had lost their spot as the number one science company in the country to Black Mesa themselves, having gone bankrupt by 1997. Black Mesa had access to advanced teleportation technology and alternate dimensions, but had no access to studying materials from the alternate dimensions, until the creation of the Anti-Mass Spectrometer by the Sector C team, gained notoriety from the Science field because of its usefulness in identifying new materials on Earth and off-world, becoming incredibly popular amongst scientists who attempted to replicate such machines, Arbeit Laboratories being a famous example of one.
Black Mesa was previously famous for their teleportation technology among the physics science field, and held the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize for the Sector C Anti-Mass Spectrometer team, which included Colette Green, Cheryl Hicks, Gina Cross, Eli Vance, Isaac Kleiner, and the head of the facility, Wallace Breen. Until December 6, 2000, which was the date of the aforementioned Resonance Cascade that destroyed the facility, and also caused the Xen Invasion and later Seven Hour War. In the early morning, a system crash caused by a massive email caused the Black Mesa IT Division and Security Division to lose all data on their files, having to recover them from the servers, which also added onto by the fact the Anti-Mass Spectrometer was forced to turn to 101 percent by Black Mesa Administrator Breen, which caused several electronics in the facility to fail or explode from the overexertion of the technology at the facility. Gordon Freeman was later described as being tardy to his job as the materials handler for the experiment, before physically pushing the sample into the Anti-Mass Spectrometer as it functioned, and causing the explosion that caused the Resonance Cascade.
History
1945–1953: Foundation, participation in the US Nuclear Weapons program, and search for research facility
In 1945, the two founders, Wallace Breen and Jonathan Whitehead were studying at University of New Mexico's Physics Institute when they formed the company, Black Mesa Research Foundation on the eleventh, having been joined by several former Manhattan Project employees, formed the research foundation in the basement of the Institute after the university gave permission for them to use it in specific schedules to conduct research on nuclear physics separate from the United States Nuclear Weapon Program, despite being connected to it very loosely. For a while, one of the main influences for the physics research done at the Black Mesa Research Foundation was Aperture Innovators, which used their advanced physics and scientific knowledge to make shower curtains appear more hygienic, which influenced Black Mesa at the time because the foundation sold important physics research and nuclear material to nuclear power plants and US Government entities that they had access to.
In 1948, Breen and Whitehead were approached by the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to assist in the production of nuclear weapons, having an important hand in the calculations of several tests in Operation Sandstone, especially the bombs X-Ray and Yoke, with the foundation supplying the government with nuclear material to help assist in the construction of these bombs. In return, the AEC paid Breen and Whitehead US$14.3 million dollars in return for their service in the production of nuclear weapons, but also forced them to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and Breen at the time had some reservations about helping in the production of weapons of mass destruction, saying later on that he had regrets and that he didn't want to assist in the production of weapons that could hurt the common man. Whitehead signed the non-disclosure agreement, and were paid US$23.5 million for the atomic research they also supplied to the AEC for nuclear weapon production.
In the early 1950s, Black Mesa sought out to purchase the Black Mesa Missile Complex from the United States government, and use the facility to produce more research based on their already existing products. Jonathan Whitehead at the time had been suffering from lung cancer at the time because of a couple of experiments that took place in the late 1940s that he oversaw, leaving him with severe lung damage and he would later pass away from lung cancer and severe lung damage in 1952, before the purchase of the Black Mesa Research Facility. Wallace Breen also took over his role and decided to go through with the purchase of