Michigan State University's Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) officially opened on May 2 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by energy secretary Jennifer Granholm, MSU president Samuel L. Stanley, Jr., elected officials, and many guests who had supported the project during its planning and construction, including ANS Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer Craig Piercy (see page 66). They were there to celebrate the completion-on time and within budget-of the world's most powerful heavy-ion accelerator and the first accelerator-based Department of Energy Office of Science user facility located on a university campus. The superconducting linear accelerator at the heart of FRIB will propel atoms of all elements, from hydrogen to uranium, to half the speed of light, resulting in collisions that produce isotopes so rare that until now they have been formed only in stars and stellar explosions. FRIB will give about 1,600 researchers from around the world access to more than 1,000 rare isotopes. That research will lead to discoveries about the properties of rare isotopes, nuclear astrophysics, and fundamental nuclear physics, pushing the boundaries of known isotopes on the Chart of the Nuclides.
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