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 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.

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 even 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.

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.

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 plans to 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.

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