Sitting at a bank of monitors, an operator stares at his control panels. The monitors display dot graphs and a sterile white row of panels bristle with dials, switches and keys that the technician toggles and presses to get a stream of charged nuclear particles running again.

In the machine-covered control room of MSU’s National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, silence is the worst sound an operator can hear.

“That means the beam stopped,” said Kevin Edwards, a technician in control of the massive machines.

It’s a difficult decision to stop the beam of flowing isotopes, he said, because it’s costly - about $3,000 an hour - to get it started again.

Moments later, a right key sequence is punched and the machine resumes producing the isotopes.

“Hear that noise? The noise that sounds like static?” said Brad Sherril, assistant director of Nuclear Physics. “Those are nuclei moving around in the cyclotron.”

MSU’s cyclotrons are currently the most advanced nuclear isotope research machines in the country. At the building on the corner of Shaw Lane and Bogue Street, researchers from around the nation complete experiments - that used to take months - in days.

Because of its highly advanced program and expertise with the cyclotrons, MSU could receive a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to build a Rare Isotope Accelerator on campus, the first of its kind. Still in the design stages, the half-mile long piece of machinery is expected to be about 10,000 times more powerful than MSU’s two linked cyclotrons.

Jennifer Church, a physics graduate student who is conducting an experiment on special isotopes of magnesium, aluminum and silicon for her thesis, said she is the first to measure certain variations of aluminum and silicon.

“It’s very exciting,” she said. “We’re like kids, always asking ‘Why?’”

Her excitement extends beyond her workplace.

“I have good news,” Church’s answering machine says. “My thesis experiment has finally started, so you might want to try me at the cyclotron.”

When she finishes her experiment, Church will add her findings to a base of worldwide information, which has been done by only a handful of people. After graduation, she plans to move on to a teaching job. She’s always wanted to teach physics at a four-year university, she said.

But something like the accelerator would lure her back to MSU, she said. A machine with such potential is a draw for anyone in her field.

HOW IT WORKS

MSU is one of the foremost nuclear physics research institutions in the country - ranked second by the U.S. News & World Report in 1999 - and will continue to be, if the accelerator is built here, MSU administrators say.

“It’s like when you first start hauling things and you need a truck,” said Konrad Gelbke, a professor and director of the cyclotron facility. “But when you’re building something, you need a big rig to do it.”

The accelerator is the descendant of what is available on campus now. Its design enables researchers to create more particles per second, quickening research time and quality of results.

Researchers will have the ability to stop particles in the middle of their acceleration with new technologies slated to go into the device - some of which haven’t been invented yet.

“Slowing something down from the speed of light and bringing it to a stop in the lab isn’t so easy,” Gelbke said. “The cutting edge is where you’re doing something that’s just barely possible.”

Researchers use equipment such as cyclotrons and the accelerator to study the properties of nuclear material and examine what happens when nuclei - the cores of atoms, the building blocks of all matter - are smashed against each other at incredible speeds.

It works like a child running toy cars into each other just to see what happens, Sherril said. But in the cyclotron, they’re running their toys together at the speed of light.

“With the cyclotron, you’re only running Volkswagens into Volkswagens,” he said. “But with the accelerator, you can ram Volkswagens into semitrucks and Chevrolets into conversion vans. You learn something from running Volkswagens into each other, but you can only learn so much.”

But what they learn from smashing their Volkswagens and conversion vans has significance stretching from the tiniest part of the human body to the unexplored regions of space.

“The research is creating new isotopes that don’t exist on Earth,” Gelbke said. “Some of them may have technical properties. Some of them, knowing their properties, may even have national security issues, or biological and medical applications.”

Many of these elements only are naturally created in events such as supernova explosions or in old stars, he said.

To be able to artificially create the heavy nuclei would teach researchers more about the universe, researchers need a more powerful machine.

“We’re exploring space in new ways,” Gelbke said. “These nuclei play an important role in the cosmos. We need another factor of 10,000 to work further down the road for the heavier elements.”

How it could work

During this year’s State of the State address, Gov. John Engler said it is important to ensure Michigan has an array of technology to lure businesses.

“The impact will be huge,” Engler spokesman Matt Resch said. “It’ll spread far beyond even the campus.

“It would certainly employ - once it is operational - some pretty well-educated scientific minds. But it still needs to be built, which means good jobs that many blue-collar hardworking families want and need.”

Resch said the facility would be built, managed and operated by Michigan residents, making it about a $1 billion dollar investment.

But MSU isn’t the only institution vying for the accelerator.

The decision on where to build the facility hasn’t been made, with MSU and the Chicago-based Argonne National Laboratory as the front-runners for the accelerator.

“Nobody knows how to do this competition,” Gelbke said. “No one’s even sure there will be a competition.”

According to the U.S. Department of Energy - the department proposing the accelerator project - labs and universities are not allowed to compete for research facilities.

Representatives at Argonne argue their institution is the best place for the site.

Researchers at Argonne and MSU have shared information and equipment with each other at their respective institutions.

“Both our groups have a long history of outstanding research,” said Don Geesaman, director of physics at the Argonne lab.

Geesaman said it would be more expensive and environmentally hazardous to build the facility in East Lansing. A joint cost estimate between MSU and Argonne found $60 to $80 million dollars of additional resources would be needed to build the facility at MSU.

Unlike MSU, Argonne has facilities in place that are able to deal with the radioactive wastes that may be produced by the accelerator during experiments. Workers at MSU’s cyclotron never have had to store the types of waste the accelerator would produce.

“That’s the kind of thing that would potentially have to be constructed at the MSU site,” Geesaman said.

But the money isn’t a problem, state officials say. During his address, Engler promised a “down payment” to help the project along. No cost estimates for the facility are available.

“We will back MSU with anything we can do to help this come to Michigan State,” Resch said.

Last month, the National Science Foundation increased funding for the cyclotron lab by nearly 50 percent, bringing its funding to $75 million over five years. Funding was added to cover operational costs of the newly coupled cyclotron. The cyclotron addition was completed this summer.

The additions required 14 more full-time positions at the research facility. A facility like the rare isotope accelerator would require more staff, recruiting more high-quality faculty and staff, cyclotron officials said.

And MSU would offer more students a chance to educate themselves at the helm of the most powerful accelerator in the world, Gelbke said.

There are about 40 resident graduate students supported by MSU, and at least 20 visiting students from other institutions at any given time, cyclotron officials estimate. At Argonne, about 70 students a year come through the facility to work on experiments, sharing space and resources with full-time researchers.

MSU also employs about 50 undergraduate students, who are doing administrative work, computer support or work on electronics applications.

“The undergraduates really penetrate the study here,” Gelbke said. “The main difference is that we’re spending several million dollars a year to support (students) and Argonne doesn’t.”

Building the accelerator at a national lab puts a limit on the number of students that are learning things, Gelbke said, and if those numbers slim down, then the national labs will see a drop in staffing and they’ll empty out.

“There’s a shorter pipeline from discovery to education,” Gelbke said. “Students need to be involved, because this is where their education is, and it’s where they’re deciding what their careers will be.”

Chris Boyer can be reached at boyerchr@msu.edu.