“Wow,” he told the Department of Energy committee that delivered the good news.

“The only thing that came to my mind was, ‘wow,’” Gelbke said. “I was stunned.”

Since that moment Dec. 11, Gelbke and the rest of the FRIB team has shifted from competition mode to preparation mode to bring one of the most powerful particle accelerators in the world to East Lansing.

FRIB’s function

The FRIB’s scientific motivation is the same as the Cyclotron, Gelbke said. Both facilities aim to explore nuclei at their rarest forms by creating intense beams of these particles.

The difference is that FRIB will be the most powerful tool of its kind in the world, and between 1,000 and 100,000 times more powerful than MSU’s Cyclotron.

The machine will be able to accelerate stable atoms at high-intensity speeds and then smash them to create unique isotopes.

With such an increase in intensity, the new facility will allow scientists to study many more forms of rare isotopes.

“In the past 100 years, we could study perhaps 1,000 atomic species,” Gelbke said. “With FRIB, that will triple to quadruple. You’re opening a vast terrain for exploration that you didn’t know.”

Gelbke said rare isotopes that were discovered 30 years ago are now mainstream medical tools. For example, doctors can now produce some forms of nitrogen and oxygen to help locate cancer within the body.

Rick Casten, a physics professor at Yale, said the FRIB facility has been the item of desire in the physics community for some time.

“The expansion of the horizons will open up whole new areas of research that we’ve all been hungering after, lusting after for years and years,” he said.

“It will put the U.S. firmly in the worldwide lead in this field.”

FRIB’s famous crib

Currently ranked No. 2 in the nation for nuclear physics graduate programs behind MIT, MSU will be launched to the head of the world’s class with the addition of FRIB.

Jeff Sherwood, a spokesman for the DOE, said the goal behind the project was to maintain the U.S. as a world leader in nuclear physics.

“(The DOE and independent agencies) have concluded that such a U.S. facility is a vital part of the U.S. nuclear science portfolio needed to complement existing and planned international efforts, will provide capabilities unmatched elsewhere, and should be a high priority for the U.S.,” Sherwood said.

According to the DOE, FRIB will provide research opportunities for 1,000 scientists. Gelbke said the facility will attract top physicists from around the world.

“We’re world leaders among other world leaders, but I would predict that FRIB will be the heavyweight, 800-pound gorilla, world leader,” he said. “Which is really the facility where people want to come, which is a much bigger attraction, because of its immense power.”

MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon said FRIB is the reward of an institutional commitment to isotope research that started in the 1960s.

“I think this validates that 46-year institutional commitment to rare isotope research,” she said. “At the same time, I think this is an affirmation that we’re viewed to be of sufficient strength to carry the work of the rare isotope field forward for the country and for the world for the next 30 years.”

Estimations predict the facility will be completed and in use by 2017.

Although that means current physics students won’t be around to experience the machine, it doesn’t mean they aren’t excited about what it adds to MSU’s academic prowess.

“MSU’s reputation will only improve because of the caliber of the professors, researchers, graduate and undergraduate students drawn to MSU because of the FRIB,” astrophysics senior Ahron Barber said. “This will be one of MSU’s major advancements in its teaching as an institution.”

It’s not just the physics

Although FRIB will be the premier nuclear physics research location in the world, those who have never opened a physics textbook will still feel its effects.

The project is expected to bring $1 billion in economic growth to the state during the next 20 years along with 400 new jobs in research. In addition, the Anderson Economic Group predicts about 5,800 new one-year construction jobs would be created and the state will receive almost $200 million in tax revenue from construction.

But the economic boost doesn’t end there.

U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Brighton, said FRIB will create a number of indirect benefits to further stimulate the state’s economy.

“There’s a huge potential for new companies, workers and jobs that come with it,” Rogers said. “In addition, you have the entertainment and food professional services that surround every new company that comes in.”

Work to be done

Gelbke said the DOE’s decision to move forward with MSU was a big first hurdle, but only the first in a long race to the finish.

In order for FRIB’s development to continue, MSU and the DOE must negotiate a cooperative agreement. After that, Gelbke and others at the Cyclotron will initiate a number of design phases to come up with a concrete plan for the project. Once the design phase is complete and reviewed by the DOE, Congress must appropriate funds for the facility to be built.

“FRIB will be built and we got the first call and we’re putting the team together,” Gelbke said. “If we are unsuccessful with that, then there will be a breakaway point.

“Projects of this magnitude, we should have no illusions, they are always vulnerable. If money is tight, and we can anticipate that money will not always be abundant, there’s always a lot of competition for money.”

To ensure MSU doesn’t falter on its way to the physics summit, Gelbke said the FRIB team will strive for perfection at every hurdle.

“We have to make sure that one, we are technically and scientifically impeccable and, number two, we have to make sure that we have public and congressional support,” he said. “I’m pretty confident that we can do this.”

Much of FRIB’s future will be decided by congressional approval of funds for the project. Rogers said he was confident that FRIB would remain a high priority in the new administration.

“You can’t promise anything,” he said. “In a bipartisan fashion, we’re going to work to make sure this gets in the budget. To some degree, you never know how much, but we’ve got to get it in there to keep it alive and well and moving forward.”

Rogers said President-elect Barack Obama’s selection for secretary of energy, Steven Chu, could help. Chu is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist at the University of California, Berkeley.

“If anybody can understand the importance of this, it’s him,” Rogers said.

Although Gelbke was hesitant to be overoptimistic, he said he’s excited about the future of the Cyclotron, no matter what it holds.

“We know that there’s a lot of work that lies ahead and we shouldn’t underestimate it, but I think the fact that the DOE has selected us is really a statement of confidence,” he said.

“We are now on a road where we have to earn that trust on a day-by-day basis, and I’ll make sure that we deliver.”