Superconducting Super Collider

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Template:Hadron colliders The Superconducting Super Collider (often abbreviated as SSC) was a ring particle accelerator which was planned to be built in the area around Waxahachie, Texas. It was planned to have a ring circumference of 87 km (54 mi) and an energy of 20 TeV per beam, potentially enough energy to create a Higgs boson, a particle predicted by the Standard Model, but not yet detected. The project's director was Roy Schwitters, a physicist at the University of Texas at Austin and Harvard University.

The system was first envisioned in the December 1983 National Reference Designs Study, which examined the technical and economic feasibility of a machine with the design capacity of 20 TeV per beam. After an extensive Department of Energy review during the mid 1980s, a site selection process began in 1987. The project was awarded to Texas in November 1988 and major construction began in 1991. Seventeen shafts were sunk and 14.6 miles of tunnel were bored by late 1993.

During the design and the first construction stage, a heated debate ensued about the high cost of the project (the last estimate was $8.25 billion). An especially recurrent argument was the contrast with NASA's contribution to the International Space Station (ISS), which was of similar amount. Critics of the project argued that the US could not afford both of them.

The project was canceled by Congress in 1993. Many factors contributed to the shutdown of the project, although different parties disagree on which contributed the most. They include rising cost estimates, mismanagement by physicists and Department of Energy officials, the end of the need to prove the supremacy of American science with the collapse of the Soviet Union, belief that many smaller scientific experiment of equal merit could be funded for the same cost, Congress's desire to generally reduce spending, and the unwillingness of President Bill Clinton to support a project initiated by his Republican predecessor, George H. W. Bush. Template:Ref The closing of the SSC held drastic ramifications for the southern part of the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex, and resulted in a mild recession made most evident in those parts of Dallas which lay south of the Trinity River. Template:Ref At the time the project was cancelled, 22.5 km (14 mi) of tunnel were already dug and nearly 2 billion dollars had already been spent on the massive facility.

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References

The God Particle : If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? by Leon Lederman, Dick Teresi (ISBN 0385312113)
A Hole in Texas by Herman Wouk, Fiction, Little, Brown
The Dead Collider by Bruce Sterling, F&SF Science column #13
Template:Note{{cite journal

| author = Jeffrey Mervis and Charles Seife
| year = 2003
| month = 3 October
| title = Lots of reasons, but few lessons
| journal = Science
| volume = 302
| issue = 5642
| pages = 38-40
| url = http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/search?volume=302&firstpage=38&search_citation-search.x=0&search_citation-search.y=0&search_citation-search=search
}}

Template:Note{{cite journal

| author = Jeffrey Mervis
| year = 2003
| month = 3 October
| title =  Scientists are long gone, but bitter memories remain
| journal = Science
| volume = 302
| issue = 5642
| pages = 40-41
| url = http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/search?volume=302&firstpage=40&search_citation-search.x=0&search_citation-search.y=0&search_citation-search=search
}}

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