AUSTRALIA'S biggest and most expensive toy is hidden deep in suburban Melbourne.
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While it has a fancy name - the Australian Synchrotron - it looks more like an enclosed velodrome with pit lanes than a powerful scientific tool.
Like any boy's dream, this 380-metre, $200 million machine combines high speed with collisions.
The Australian Synchrotron accelerates electrons before hurling them down beamlines. The electrons create light beams which are then manipulated by powerful magnets, focusing the energy.
The intense light - a million times brighter than the sun - acts like a super microscope, revealing nature's building blocks.
The particle accelerator is helping Australian scientists lead the world in numerous areas, with its limitless scientific applications, from medicine to agriculture.
The Australian Synchrotron opened in July 2007.
Since then it has conducted about 500 experiments a year and become the focus of scientific endeavour in Australia. Scientists flock to the machine in droves, hoping to test their hypotheses.
But about one in five applications are rejected due to limited capacity. The synchrotron currently operates at only one-quarter its possible capability.
The Australian Synchrotron's head of science, Associate Professor Andrew Peele, says the facility has the space to house up to 38 beamlines in the future.
Peele says the facility has helped stop the brain drain in Australia.
''People want to come here, we had huge competition for people who wanted to work here,'' Peele says. ''It's the leading place in the world for many studies, certainly in the southern hemisphere.
Those who gain access have an enviable strike rate.
Peele says academics measure success by the rate of turning experiments into academic papers.
''The amount of publications we have per beamline per year is right up there with the best facilities around the world.
''We've gone from nothing to that within five years, usually there's a time lag, and we're still seeing growth in the numbers of publications we're getting.''
Peele says that scientific findings then filter out into patents and commercial interactions - the measurement for success as applied by bureaucrats.
In a time when funding is hard to come by, governments are always seeking bang for bucks.
Scientists are left to juggle commercial and scientific interests.
CSIRO's recent $220 million settlement for inventing Wi-Fi is one such example of commercial and scientific interests coinciding.
While Peele says that the CSIRO example is a one-in-100-year result, already research conducted with the support of the synchrotron has saved the Australian economy billions.
''After five years we've already got what I think is a staggering amount of high profile interactions with industry and high impact stories.''
Studies conducted with the aid of the synchrotron could soon provide a $118 million boon for the Australian sheep industry.
Sheep leather is too weak to be used for commercial applications and skins of slaughtered sheep are currently thrown away.
But scientists hope to produce commercial grade leather from the waste by studying the nano-scale structure of sheep leather.
The process has the potential to add $10 in value to each sheep.
Other studies have helped improve the productivity of the mining industry and reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in concrete production.
But the future looked bleak last year when neither federal or state government budgets allocated funding for the world-class facility.
Fortunately, the recent federal and state budgets announced a $100 million boost - guaranteeing another four years of operation.
The joint federal-state agreement provides $69 million from the Commonwealth and $26 million from Victoria.
New Zealand is also expected to make a contribution.
The news was welcomed with relief by Peele.
''That now gives us a fantastic platform to go forward, a platform to build a facility,'' Peele says.
''It's hard to tell someone 'We need money to build a new beamline which will be great for this type of science' if you're also saying you can't run it for more than a year because we've got no money.
''We've now got four more years and a process going forward to keep funding rolling in on a regular basis.''
Without the funding, Peele says Australia will fall behind the other 37 particle accelerators across the world. He says synchrotron science is like Formula One racing.
''Every year Formula One moves ahead and if you drive last year's car, you're not going to make the grid.''