In 1921, Nobel laureate Otto Hahn discovered the first nuclear isomer, an atomic nucleus whose protons and neutrons are arranged differently from the common form of the element, causing it to have unusual properties. A century after Hahn first discovered isomers, scientists are still discovering new isomers using powerful research facilities around the world, including the the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University. This facility came online in May 2022, and hopes to unlock more than 1,000 new isotopes and isomers.

Yahoo News UK included the Guardian’s “New U.S. lab to create versions of atoms never recorded on Earth” article (16 May 2022) in its news feed. Click the link in the item listed below to see the article on the Guardian’s website.

From carbon to uranium, oxygen to iron, chemical elements are the building blocks of the world around us and the wider universe. Now, physicists are hoping to gain an unprecedented glimpse into their origins, with the opening of a new facility that will create thousands of peculiar and unstable versions of atoms never before recorded on Earth.

FRIB is home to the world's most powerful heavy ion accelerator. The technology required innovation and not just from the scientists. In 2014, Gunthorpe Plumbing and Heating in East Lansing, in a joint venture with Limbach, got a contract to work on the $730 million nuclear science research facility.

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 2 May. Experiments at the $730 million Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University 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.