Designer isotopes push the frontier of science

Applications include medicine and national security

Bradley Sherrill, a Michigan State University distinguished professor and associate director for research at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, notes that the smallest frontiers of science -- nuclear physics --... Click here for more information.

Designer labels have a lot of cachet, a principle that's equally true in fashion and physics.

The future of nuclear physics is in designer isotopes--the relatively new power scientists have to make specific rare isotopes to solve scientific problems and open doors to new technologies, according to Bradley Sherrill, a University distinguished professor of physics and associate director for research at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) at Michigan State University (MSU).

"We have developed a remarkable capability over the last 10 or so years that allows us to build a specific isotope to use in research," Sherrill said. "It is a new tool that promises to allow whole new directions in research to move forward. There are tremendous advances that are possible."

Sherrill outlined some of the possibilities and what it will take to get there in a perspective piece in the May 9 edition of Science magazine.

In that article, he writes nanotechnology is getting a lot of attention for the astonishing possibilities of constructing objects with individual atoms and molecules. Sherrill, however, said that nanotechnology hardly is the last word in small.

The chemical changes that brought about the formation of the elements in the bellies of stars are being recreated in laboratories such as MSU's NSCL. Advances in basic nuclear science already have given way to technologies such as PET (short for positron emission tomography) scans, which are medical procedures that use special isotopes to target specific types of tumors.