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Did the U.S. Lose the Lead in the New Nuclear Cold War by NOT Building Our Own Large Hadron Collider?
Wednesday, April 23, 2014 2:34
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The American version of the LHC was the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), nicknamed the Desertron, a particle accelerator complex under construction in the vicinity of Waxahachie, Texas, that was set to be the world’s largest and most energetic, surpassing the current record held by the Large Hadron Collider.
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Its planned ring circumference was 87.1 kilometres (54.1 mi) with an energy of 20 TeV per proton. The project’s director was Roy Schwitters, a physicist at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Louis Ianniello served as its first Project Director for 15 months.
The project was cancelled in 1993 due to budget problems. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe was completed in 2008 at a cost of approximately $9bn and is the world’s largest and most powerful particle collider, built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) from 1998 to 2008. Its aim is to allow physicists to test the predictions of different theories of particle physics and high-energy physics, and particularly prove or disprove the existence of the theorized Higgs particle and of the large family of new particles predicted by supersymmetric theories, including worm holes, strings and superstrings that indicate parallel universes if not an infinity of multiverses on a theoretic basis.
The Higgs particle (Higgs Boson) was confirmed by data from the LHC in 2013. The LHC is expected to address some of the unsolved questions of physics, advancing human understanding of subnuclear quantum physical laws. It contains seven detectors, each designed for specific kinds of research.
The LHC was built in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries, as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories. It lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference, as deep as 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland.
The American SSC project was first formally discussed 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 proton. Fermilab director and subsequentNobel physics prizewinner Leon Lederman was a very prominent early supporter – some sources say the architect or proposer– of the Superconducting Super Collider project, which was endorsed around 1983, and a major proponent and advocate throughout its lifetime.
An extensive U.S. Department of Energy review was done during the mid-1980s. Seventeen shafts were sunk and 23.5 km (14.6 mi) of tunnel were bored by late 1993 at a cost of one billion dollars.
During the design and the first construction stage, a heated debate ensued about the high cost of the project. In 1987, Congress was told the project could be completed for $4.4 billion, and it gained the enthusiastic support of Speaker Jim Wright of nearby Fort Worth, Texas. A recurring argument was the contrast with NASA‘s contribution to the International Space Station (ISS), a similar dollar amount.
Critics of the project (Congressmenrepresenting other US states and scientists working in non-SSC fields who felt the money would be better spent on their own fields) argued that the US could not afford both of them. Early in 1993 a group supported by funds from project contractors organized a public relations campaign to lobby Congress directly, but in June, the non-profit Project on Government Oversight released a draft audit report by the Department of Energy‘s Inspector General heavily criticizing the Super Collider for its high costs and poor management by officials in charge of it.
And then filled in the holes already dug at a cost of another billlion dollars, making it “the most expensive holes in history”. (Michio Kaku, Parallel Universes, pg 379)
