A 50-foot-wide circular electromagnet — so delicate that tilting it just a few degrees would destroy it — must make a four-week journey this summer off the U.S. coast and up a river, before inching its way by road to a new home at Fermilab in Batavia.

The Muon g-2 ring, an electromagnet made of steel and aluminum, begins its 3,200-mile trek from New York in early June. From there, it will sail by barge down the East Coast, around Florida's tip into the Gulf of Mexico, then up the Mississippi River until it arrives in Illinois.

Once on land, the electromagnet will be driven at night in a specially designed truck at no more than 10 mph until it reaches Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

The high-tech transport is all in service of a plan to use Fermilab's powerful beam to send muons, a rare kind of particle that lasts just 2.2 millionths of a second, into the circular electromagnet, according to experiment spokesman Lee Roberts, who works at Fermilab. Once in the ring, muons "wobble," or tilt like a top.

What scientists find could open up a whole new world of particle physics, said Roberts, a Boston University physicist.

"It could be a major discovery," Roberts said.

Based on the current understanding of the way the universe works, scientists measured out to the sixth decimal place the exact value of the muons' wobble. But at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, where the electromagnet was built in the 1990s, the wobbling wasn't matching scientists' measurements, suggesting that unknown particles could be at play.

Because the Brookhaven lab's beam wasn't as powerful as Fermilab's, the margin of error was too high to classify their findings as a discovery.

"Fermilab can generate a much more intense and pure beam of muons, so the Muon g-2 experiment should be able to close that margin of error," said Chris Polly, project manager for Fermilab, in a release to the media. "If we can do that, this experiment could indicate that there is exciting science awaiting beyond what we have observed."

Scientists say now that Fermilab's Tevatron particle accelerator has been dismantled, the infrastructure exists to conduct the work there.

Polly said the new experiment is a "very visible statement that Fermilab hasn't gone away" even though the Tevatron has shut down. The Muon g-2 project is part of a long-term strategy that scientists hope will culminate in producing — by the end of the decade — the most powerful beams in the world, he said.

But first the ring has to get there.

Roberts said the trip will cost $2 million to $3 million, compared with the $30 million it would take to build a new one at Fermilab. Officials contracted with a company that specializes in moving large objects and picked a time for the sea voyage that would minimize the chance of heavy waves, in the summer before serious tropical storms would normally be expected to arrive.

The road portions of the trip also may be nerve-wracking.

Roberts said one section of a tollway will have just six inches of clearance. Trees and signs may have to be removed in sections to make room, as well, he said. Rolling street and highway closures are planned to keep lanes clear, according to the Fermilab media release.

During the journey, the ring will be held snug in a frame built to keep the electromagnet stable, since a bump or jolt of just a few degrees would irreparably harm the complex wiring inside, according to Roberts.

If and when the ring safely arrives, it will take years, tons of steel and months of complex calculations to re-construct the machine inside a newly built structure at Fermilab. Roberts said the estimated date to begin the experiment is 2016, and 26 institutions from around the world are involved in the project.

As for all the things that could go wrong in the meantime, Roberts has a strategy.

"I just try not to think about it," he said. "Especially late at night."