The world's most powerful heavy-ion accelerator — which will create new
exotic atoms and reveal how stars and supernovas forge the elements that
make up our universe — is finally completed, researchers announced May
2.
Experiments at the $730 million Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at
Michigan State University (MSU) are slated to start this week. Once online,
the new reactor will fire two heavy atomic nuclei at each other, splitting
them apart in ways that enable scientists to study what glues them together
and how rare atomic isotopes — versions of chemical elements with different
numbers of neutrons in their nuclei — are structured.
While past heavy-ion accelerators (such as the National Superconducting
Cyclotron Laboratory, MSU's previous accelerator) enabled scientists to
catch glimpses of exotic atoms, they didn't produce them at a fast enough
rate to make detailed study possible. The new FRIB accelerator will grant
researchers access to more than 1,000 new isotopes, giving them fresh
insight into new cancer treatments, radiometric dating of ancient materials,
and nuclear security, according to MSU scientists.
"FRIB will be the core piece of our nation's research infrastructure,"
Thomas Glasmacher, the FRIB Laboratory Director, said at the ribbon-cutting
ceremony, according to the Lansing State Journal. "More than 1,600
scientists are eager to come here because we will be the best, most powerful
superconducting heavy-ion linear accelerator."
Physicists are excited by the FRIB because it may provide a much clearer
view of the landscape of possible atomic isotopes. Right now, physicists
have a good idea of what holds nuclei together — one of the four fundamental
forces called the strong force — and have made a good number of models to
predict what some unobserved atomic nuclei might look like. But nuclei are
complex and can glue together in surprising ways, making the models far too
simplistic. A number of the nuclei predicted by the models, for instance,
might not hold together well enough to exist.
Other questions that scientists hope to answer include how well the most
stable isotopes are described by current models, and how elements heavier
than iron and nickel (the latter two being the heaviest elements made by
nuclear fusion in stars) are formed through radioactive beta decay. Beta
decay takes place when an atomic nucleus absorbs a neutron or when one of
its neutrons becomes a proton, making the nucleus unstable.
Scientists believe that elements formed by beta decay are typically made as
byproducts of supernovas or the collisions of neutron stars, but until now
haven't been able to check, or to study what kinds of elements are produced
and in what proportions during these celestial processes. But FRIB will
provide a way to finally test these suppositions, as one if its accelerators
speeds up individual isotopes before smashing them into a target, enabling
scientists to simulate the collisions that take place inside stars and
supernovas.
To produce isotopes for study, physicists will select atoms of a very heavy
element, such as uranium, before stripping them of their electrons to turn
them into ions. Then they will launch them down a 1,476-foot-long (450
meters) pipe more than halfway to the speed of light. At the end of the
pipe, the beam of ions will hit a graphite wheel, splintering into smaller
neutron-proton combinations, or isotopes.
By steering these freshly made isotopes through a series of finely
adjustable magnets, the physicists will be able to carefully select which
isotope they want to fire into one of the facility's experimental halls for
further study. FRIB will eventually be joined by another atom smasher, the
$3.27 billion Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) currently
being built in Darmstadt, Germany. The accelerator, set for completion in
2027, has been designed to make antimatter as well as matter, and will be
able to store the nuclei it produces for longer timeframes than FRIB.
Originally published on
Live Science.