Pipes, computers, cranes and other machines clutter a first-floor room in MSU's National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, where about 35 university employees have toiled endlessly, day after day for the past four years.
Scientists at the facility, on the corner of Shaw Lane and Bogue Street, work in dust-free rooms wearing white lab coats and face masks, generating technology that would enable MSU researchers to create rare isotopes - some found only in outer space - by creating previously unobserved isotopes from elements found on earth at velocities near three-quarters the speed of light.
The employees have one goal: To help bring one of the country's most influential research projects to campus - the U.S. Department of Energy's $930 million Rare Isotope Accelerator project.
And an announcement made Monday by U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham has brought the university one step closer to its dream project.
MSU officials say studying the isotopes - which would be one of the biggest research projects the university ever has undertaken - might develop advancements that would influence almost all aspects of life, from medical breakthroughs to environmental research.
If the university is granted the federally funded project, MSU would be the world's most technologically advanced center in this field of nuclear physics. The idea for the project, known as RIA, emerged from concepts developed at MSU.
The long-term effort from MSU researchers will culminate in officials vying for a facility of about 75 acres, where particles a billion times smaller than the width of a human hair would be studied.
"It's the largest single project MSU has tried to bring to campus, there's no doubt about that," said Konrad Gelbke, director of MSU's Cyclotron. "With current technology, it is probably the most powerful machine to make these isotopes in these laboratories."
It's so powerful, Gelbke said, that the only greater force would be a supernova.
"But you can't go there," he said. "It's like the sun exploding."
Howard Gobstein, MSU's associate vice president of governmental affairs, in Washington, D.C., has been pushing U.S. legislators to bring the project to East Lansing.
"When in my career do I have a chance to get a billion-dollar federal facility for the state of Michigan?" he said. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
Before Monday, the project only was in preliminary stages, MSU officials said.
Abraham's announcement, which came Monday during a live televised conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., solidified RIA as the No. 3 scientific research project in the United States for the next 20 years. The project was tied with four others for the slot.
Being ranked third placed RIA as near-term facility, meaning Department of Energy officials will urge Congress to financially support near-term projects before endeavors further down on the list.
Abraham said there is no time frame for choosing where each of the projects will be built but said he hopes all the projects move forward within the next two decades.
There are 28 scientific proposals on the Department of Energy's priority list.
Acquiring the project would advance the university's status in isotope research, which Gelbke ranks as one of the top five in the world. Similar research is done through MSU's superconducting Cyclotrons.
In 1999, U.S. News and World Report ranked MSU's doctoral nuclear physics program second in the nation, behind the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Gelbke said obtaining RIA would enable researchers to convert light elements, such as helium, into isotopes at rates of 20 to 100 times faster than cyclotron technology.
For heavy elements, such as gold, the machinery will allow isotopes to be created 10,000 to 100,000 times faster.
"A hundred-thousand times faster is the difference between a day and a second," Gelbke said. "RIA is a big beast."
Gelbke said some of the rare isotopes MSU researchers might be studying play an important role in the evolution of stars, but the isotopes decay in short periods of time in outer space and earth, sometimes as quick as fractions of a second.
The sophisticated technology of RIA will keep rare isotopes alive anywhere from one-millionth of second to a few seconds - long enough for scientists to observe the properties of the isotopes.
The facility
Richard York, associate director for accelerators in the Cyclotron, said MSU has two sites where it could build a facility with a construction budget of $930 million.
The first proposed site is at the west corner of Jolly and College roads. The second is at the west corner of College and Sandhill roads.
The facility, which will have an $80 million annual operating budget - will be built on about 200 acres of land, allowing for future development. It will house an underground superconducting isotope accelerator, stretching about one-third of a mile long, called the driver linac.
Thomas Glasmacher, associate director of operations in the Cyclotron laboratory, said the driver linac, which works in vacuum conditions, will shoot isotopes at velocities near the speed of light.
A part of the linac, called the ion source, will convert the isotopes into charged particles called ions, which aids in the acceleration factor. The ions then hit one of six target stations, breaking apart the nucleus of atoms and creating isotopes, some of which are rare.
The rare isotopes get picked up by a filter system, which transports isotopes into two observation stations: The high-energy experimental station and the low-energy experimental station.
Isotopes in the low-area station have been re-accelerated at speeds 3 to 5 percent of the speed of light. Isotopes at the high-energy experimental station were accelerated at speeds ranging from 50 to 70 percent of the speed of light.
Glasmacher said the differences in speeds might allow researchers to observe different characteristics of each isotope.
The entire process happens in a fraction of a second, and specialized detectors convert electronic signals into computer signals allowing MSU researchers an unlimited amount of time for final analysis.
The competition
Gobstein said MSU and the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago are the top two contenders for the project, adding that he hopes the project site is selected before the end of 2004.
But a top Department of Energy official said Monday there might be more facilities other than Argonne and MSU competing for the project.
"There are a lot of other facilities interested in RIA," the official said during a conference call following Abraham's statement. The official declined to name other competitors in the running.
He added that some of these projects will see development no earlier than the 2006 fiscal year.
MSU officials said RIA's place on the priority list does not guarantee funding for the project, but is a critical first step in having it come to campus.
"When you focus on securing a project for a prolonged period of time - years, not days - you're going to be emotionally vested," York said. "We're not interested in second place. We want to win."
But he acknowledged that MSU and Argonne have an equal chance of securing the project.
Catherine Foster, spokeswoman for the Argonne National Laboratory, said the laboratory might edge out MSU because it has experience in working on large-scale projects. RIA wouldn't be its first nearly billion-dollar project.
"National laboratories have more experience with major research projects," she said. "Not only operating them, but constructing them as well. We also have the technical support system in place for a facility of that size and scope."
The laboratory has two sites with more than 4,000 employees including 1,400 engineers and scientists. It has an operating budget of more than $475 million that supports about 200 research projects.
Gelbke said a major advantage MSU has over Argonne is that undergraduate and graduate students will have firsthand experience with the state-of-the-art technology, bringing a younger generation into the field.
Mark Wallace, a graduate student studying nuclear astrophysics, has been working in the Cyclotron laboratory for about five years.
Wallace said the experience he obtained in laboratories is more beneficial than picking up a textbook.
"In order to do complex science of this scale, it takes a lot more than a physicist with an idea," he said. "It takes an entire team of scientists and engineers to put it together. Working in the facility, you really get to see the entire picture."
Glasmacher said 10 percent of the United States' roughly 70 graduating nuclear science doctoral students come from MSU each year.
"You think it's a small place, but we make a major impact," Glasmacher said. "If we don't educate them, no one will."
Economic impact
But with a stagnant state economy, RIA not only will benefit MSU, but the entire state.
If built at MSU, the project will have two phases - a 10-year building period in which a laboratory is established and 10 or more years of research for the university's scientific community.
The design is expected to produce $1.9 billion in state expenditures over 20 years, $716 million in income to Michigan's population and is expected to create more than 1,600 jobs - of which 800 will be construction jobs for creating a facility to house the technology.
Glasmacher said MSU received $1.9 million from the state to support the building of prototypes during the 2003 fiscal year.
Michigan businesses are expected to receive 85 percent of building expenditures, 10 percent of equipment purchases and 30 percent of installation expenditures from the government.
Glasmacher added that even if MSU loses the competition for RIA, university researchers still will work with scientists from the institution that is granted the federal funding.
"With RIA, MSU will be able to retain the best people and recruit the best people," he said. "If you're second best, the best people won't come here."
