Essay: Superconducting - 2/13/07
Michigan is right now in a state of profound fiscal crisis. The federal government is struggling to get its massive deficit under control.
So does it make any sense at all for Michigan State to ask for half a billion dollars to build a new and more powerful cyclotron?
Absolutely it does. You may not know it, but MSU has one of the top graduate programs in nuclear physics in America, second only to MIT. That is largely thanks to the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, which since the 1960s has attracted researchers from all over the nation, and to some extent the world.
Canny MSU President John Hannah, the man who turned a small agricultural college into a vast megaversity after World War II, got funding for the original cyclotron in the 1960s. Years later, a second more powerful machine was added, a cyclotron that was for decades the world’s highest-energy continuous beam accelerator. MSU continues to operate both machines. But they are wearing out. Unless they are replaced, scientists say they will be worthless within a decade and superseded by other facilities before that. That is the last thing Michigan needs.
Having a first-class cyclotron laboratory is exactly the sort of thing we need to attract the sort of high-tech, new economy community Michigan needs if we are not going to become … West Virginia.
This has nothing to do with building nuclear weapons, by the way. The cyclotron lab has more to do with learning about the origins of the universe, and discovering the deepest secrets of subatomic particles.
This is also a project that would be funded almost entirely with federal money. That means, our congressmen have to do some lobbying to bring home the bacon, or I should say, isotopes.
This may take some years. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin has shown support for the project, as has Congressman Vern Ehlers, himself a rare nuclear physicist in politics.
But Ehlers is now in the minority caucus, and Levin is likely to have his hands full with the Iraq war. MSU officials need to reach out to people like the powerful John Dingell, once again chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Nor would it hurt to quietly cultivate some of the presidential wannabees in Congress, like John McCain.
For many years, Michigan has sent more money to Washington than it has gotten back. That made some sense back when our economy was roaring and our income higher than the national average.
Today, our situation has changed. Our nation needs to build the latest generation of a modern superconducting laboratory, and the site of the present one is exactly the right place to build it.
And it is something Michigan needs. What Michigan has is the nation’s two longest-serving congressmen and one of the nation’s most powerful U.S. senators, all in the new majority party.
They have the clout, and this is the time and place to use it.
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