The Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) (also nicknamed the "Desertron"[2]) was a particle accelerator complex under construction in the vicinity of Waxahachie, Texas, United States.
Its planned ring circumference was 87.1 kilometers (54.1mi) with an energy of 20 TeV per proton and was designed to be the world's largest and most energetic particle accelerator. The laboratory director was Roy Schwitters, a physicist at the University of Texas at Austin. Department of Energy administrator Louis Ianniello served as its first project director, followed by Joe Cipriano, who came to the SSC Project from the Pentagon in May 1990.[3] After 22.5km (14mi) of tunnel had been bored and about US$2billion spent, the project was canceled by the US Congress in 1993.[4]
Proposal and development
The supercollider was formally discussed in the 1984 National Reference Designs Study, which examined the technical and economic feasibility of a machine with the design energy of 20 TeV per proton.[5]
Early in 1983, HEPAP (High-Energy Physics Advisory Panel) formed the New Facilities for the US High-Energy Physics Program subpanel. Led by Stanford University physicist Stanley Wojcicki,[6] and charged with making recommendations “for a forefront United States High Energy Physics Program in the next five to ten years.”[7] the HEPAP subpanel recommended that the US build the Superconducting Super Collider.[8][9]
Fermilab director and subsequent Nobel physics prizewinnerLeon Lederman was a very prominent early supporter – some sources say the architect[10] or proposer[11] – of the Superconducting Super Collider project, as well as a major proponent and advocate throughout its lifetime.[12][13]
An extensive U.S. Department of Energy review was also done during the mid-1980s. Seventeen shafts were sunk and 23.5km (14.6mi) of tunnel were bored by late 1993.[4][15]
Partial construction and financial issues
A high-level schematic of the lab landscape during the final planning phases
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 SpeakerJim Wright of nearby Fort Worth, Texas.[4][16] A recurring argument was the contrast with NASA's contribution to the International Space Station (ISS), a similar dollar amount.[4] Critics of the project (Congressmen representing other US states and scientists working in non-SSC fields who felt the money would be better spent on their own fields)[4] argued that the US could not afford both of them.
Estimates of the additional cost caused by not using existing physical and human infrastructure at Fermilab in Illinois range from $495 million to $3.28 billion.[17]
Leaders hoped to get financial support from Europe, Canada, Japan, Russia, and India. This was hindered by promotion of the project as promoting American superiority.[18] European funding remained at CERN, which was already working on the Large Hadron Collider. India pledged $50 million, but talks with Japan floundered over trade tensions in the automobile industry.[18] A US-Japanese trade mission where SSC funding was supposed to be discussed ended in the George H. W. Bush vomiting incident.[18]
Congress began appropriating annual funding for the project. In 1992, it was opposed by the majority of the House of Representatives (231-181), but was included in the final reconciled budget due to support in the Senate (62-32).[19] Early in 1993, a group supported by funds from project contractors organized a public relations campaign to lobby Congress directly in support of the project.[20] In February, the General Accounting Office reported a $630 million overrun in the $1.25 billion construction budget. By March, the New York Times reported the estimated total cost had grown to $8.4 billion.[19] 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.[20][21] The Inspector General investigated $500,000 in questionable expenses over three years, including $12,000 for Christmas parties, $25,000 for catered lunches, and $21,000 for the purchase and maintenance of office plants.[22] The report also concluded that there was inadequate documentation for $203 million in project spending, or 40% of the money spent up to that point.[23]
In 1993 U.S. President Bill Clinton tried to prevent the cancellation by asking Congress to continue "to support this important and challenging effort" through completion because "abandoning the SSC at this point would signal that the United States is compromising its position of leadership in basic science".[24]
Cancellation
After $2 billion had been spent ($400 million by the host state of Texas, the rest by the Department of Energy[18]), the House of Representatives rejected funding on October 19, 1993, and Senate negotiators failed to restore it.[25] Following Rep. Jim Slattery's successful orchestration in the House,[25] President Clinton signed the bill that finally canceled the project on October 30, 1993, stating regret at the "serious loss" for science.[26]
Many factors contributed to the cancellation:[4] rising cost estimates (to $12bn);[27] poor management 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 and the end of the Cold War; belief that many smaller scientific experiments of equal merit could be funded for the same cost; Congress's desire to generally reduce spending (the United States was running a $255bn budget deficit); the reluctance of Texas Governor Ann Richards;[28] and President Bill Clinton's initial lack of support for the project began during the administrations of Richards's predecessor, Bill Clements, and Clinton's predecessors, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.[29] The project's cancellation was also eased by opposition from within the scientific community. Prominent condensed matter physicists, such as Philip W. Anderson and Nicolaas Bloembergen, testified before Congress opposing the project. They argued that, although the SSC would certainly conduct high-quality research, it was not the only way to acquire new fundamental knowledge, as some of its supporters claimed, and so was unreasonably expensive. Scientific critics of the SSC pointed out that basic research in other areas, such as condensed matter physics and materials science, was underfunded compared to high energy physics, despite the fact that those fields were more likely to produce applications with technological and economic benefits.[30]
Reactions to the cancellation
Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in Physics, placed the cancellation of the SSC in the context of a bigger national and global socio-economic crisis, including a general crisis in funding for science research and for the provision of adequate education, healthcare, transportation and communication infrastructure, and criminal justice and law enforcement.[4]
Leon Lederman, a leading promoter and advocate of the SSC,[12][13] wrote a popular science book in the context of the project's last years and loss of congressional support. Published in 1993, The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? sought to promote awareness of the significance of the scientific work which the SSC would have supported. The book popularized the nickname "the God particle" for the Higgs boson.[31]
The closing of the SSC had adverse consequences for the southern part of the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, contributing to a mild recession especially in those parts of Dallas which lay south of the Trinity River.[32] When the project was canceled, 22.5km (14.0mi) of tunnel and 17 shafts to the surface were already dug, and nearly two billion dollars had already been spent on the massive facility.[33]
The SSC's planned collision energy of 2 x 20 = 40 TeV was roughly three times that of the 2 x 6.8 = 13.6 TeV (as of 2023) of its European counterpart, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva.[34] However, the planned luminosity was only one tenth of the design luminosity of the LHC.
Although some[who?] claimed that the SSC cost was largely due to the massive civil engineering project of digging a huge tunnel, that was somewhat of a distortion. The tunneling and conventional facility buildout budget was only about ten percent of the total budgeted cost (1.1 billion dollars out of a total cost of 10 billion). The major cost item was the magnets, still in laboratory development phase, consequently with a higher level of uncertainty attached to the final cost.[citation needed] The ring circumference of the LHC is 27km (17mi), compared to the planned 87.1 kilometers (54.1mi) of the SSC.
The LHC's advantage in terms of cost was the use of the pre-existing engineering infrastructure and 27km long cavern of the Large Electron–Positron Collider, and its use of a different, innovative magnet design to bend the higher energy particles into the available tunnel.[35] The LHC eventually cost the equivalent of about 5 billion US dollars to build. The total operating budget of CERN runs to about $1 billion per year. The Large Hadron Collider became operational in August 2008.[36]
In a 2021 interview, Schwitters speculated that, had the project been completed, it would have led to the discovery of the Higgs boson particle 10 years before its eventual discovery in Switzerland[37] and attracted an equivalent number of visitors to North Texas as CERN's 120,000 per year.
Cross sections of preform superconductor rods from sample runs
Fate of the site
View of the SSC site, 2008
After the project was canceled, the main site was deeded to Ellis County, Texas, and the county tried numerous times to sell the property. The property was sold in August 2006 to an investment group, Collider Data Center, LLC, led by the late J.B. Hunt.[38]
In 2009, Collider Data Center had contracted with GVA Cawley to market the site as a data center.[39] In 2012, chemical company Magnablend bought the property and facilities in the face of some opposition from the local community.[40] The buildings in the facility, which had become prime spots for thieves and drug parties, were renovated and were re-opened in 2013 by Magnablend.[41] The facility makes a range of oil field products for the energy service industry.
In popular culture
In Season 3, Episode 15 of Beavis and Butt-Head, titled "Citizen Butt-Head" which aired on October 18, 1993, the day before Congress cancelled the funding for the Super Collider, an honor student of Highland Highschool is overheard rehearsing his question for President Bill Clinton in which he asks: "Given the budget deficit, do you think the Super Collider is really necessary at this time?"
"Supercollider," a 1993 song by the Boston-based alternative band Tribe, describes the point of view of a scientist hired to help build the (then-uncancelled) project.
On the February 25, 2001, episode of Futurama, entitled “That’s Lobstertainment!,” a robot comedian makes a Super Collider pun and, in tongue-in-cheek fashion, states that a Super Collider was built.
On the March 6, 2002, episode of The West Wing, the supercollider is discussed when Sam Seaborn is helping an old college physics professor get funding to complete the project.
A Hole In Texas is a 2004 novel by Herman Wouk, which describes the adventures of a high-energy physicist following the surprise announcement that a Chinese physicist had discovered the long-sought Higgs boson. Parts of the plot are based on the aborted Superconducting Super Collider project.[citation needed]
On the January 21, 2021, episode of Young Sheldon the supercollider is mentioned when Sheldon Cooper's (Iain Armitage) mentor Dr. John Sturgis (Wallace Shawn) gets a new job there. A subsequent episode on the April 1, 2021, episode shows an exterior shot of the facility with Dr. Sturgis receiving a phone call from Sheldon's grandmother (Annie Potts).[citation needed]
↑ "In Memory of Louis Ianniello". JOM. Minerals, Metals & Materials Society. October 2005. Archived from the original on March 28, 2015. Retrieved August 17, 2012. Ianniello initiated the effort to construct the Superconducting Supercollider as the first project director, established the organization, led the project through the first crucial 15 months defining the Texas site specific baseline, and led the project through initial Congressional approval
↑ US Department of Energy, Report of the 1983 Subpanel on New Facilities for the U.S. HighEnergy Physics Program, Report no. DOE/ER-0169 ( July 1983), appendix A.
↑ Report of the 1983 HEPAP Subpanel on New Facilities, i, vii–viii, 5-6.
1 2 Abbott, Charles (June 1987). "Illinois Issues journal, June 1987". p.18. Lederman, who considers himself an unofficial propagandist for the super collider, said the SSC could reverse the physics brain drain in which bright young physicists have left America to work in Europe and elsewhere. (direct link to article:
1 2 Kevles, Dan (Winter 1995). "Good-bye to the SSC: On the Life and Death of the Superconducting Super Collider"(PDF). Engineering & Science. 58 (2). California Institute of Technology: 16–25. Retrieved January 16, 2013. Lederman, one of the principal spokesmen for the SSC, was an accomplished high-energy experimentalist who had made Nobel Prize-winning contributions to the development of the Standard Model during the 1960s (although the prize itself did not come until 1988). He was a fixture at congressional hearings on the collider, an unbridled advocate of its merits
↑ Clinton, Bill (June 16, 1993). "Letter to Representative William H. Natcher on the Superconducting Super Collider"(PDF). U.S. Government Printing Office. Retrieved April 4, 2012. The letter reads in part, "As your Committee considers the Energy and Water Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 1994, I want you to know of my continuing support for the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC). ... Abandoning the SSC at this point would signal that the United States is compromising its position of leadership in basic science—a position unquestioned for generations. These are tough economic times, yet our Administration supports this project as a part of its broad investment package in science and technology. ... I ask you to support this important and challenging effort."
↑ Trivelpiece, Alvin W. (2005). "Some Observations on DOE's Role in Megascience"(PDF). History of Physics Forum, American Physical Society. Retrieved July 11, 2010. Trivelpiece recounts hearing "about a conversation between the Governor of Texas, the Honorable Ann Richards, and President Clinton early in his administration. He asked her if she wanted to fight for the SSC. She said no. That meant it would no longer be an administration imperative."(subscription required)
↑ Calder, Nigel (2005). Magic Universe: A Grand Tour of Modern Science. Oxford University Press. pp.369–370. ISBN978-0-19-162235-9. The possibility that the next big machine would create the Higgs became a carrot to dangle in front of funding agencies and politicians. A prominent American physicist, Leon lederman, advertised the Higgs as The God Particle in the title of a book published in 1993 ...Lederman was involved in a campaign to persuade the US government to continue funding the Superconducting Super Collider... the ink was not dry on Lederman's book before the US Congress decided to write off the billions of dollars already spent
Leon Max Lederman was an American experimental physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988, along with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, for research on neutrinos. He also received the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1982, along with Martin Lewis Perl, for research on quarks and leptons. Lederman was director emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois. He founded the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, in Aurora, Illinois in 1986, where he was resident scholar emeritus from 2012 until his death in 2018.
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located in Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics.
The Tevatron was a circular particle accelerator in the United States, at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, east of Batavia, Illinois, and was the highest energy particle collider until the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) was built near Geneva, Switzerland. The Tevatron was a synchrotron that accelerated protons and antiprotons in a 6.28 km (3.90 mi) circumference ring to energies of up to 1 TeV, hence its name. The Tevatron was completed in 1983 at a cost of $120 million and significant upgrade investments were made during its active years of 1983–2011.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundreds of universities and laboratories across more than 100 countries. It lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference and as deep as 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the France–Switzerland border near Geneva.
ISABELLE was a 200+200 GeV proton–proton colliding beam particle accelerator partially built by the United States government at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, before it was cancelled in July, 1983.
A supercollider is a high energy particle accelerator.
The International Linear Collider (ILC) is a proposed linear particle accelerator. It is planned to have a collision energy of 500 GeV initially, with the possibility for a later upgrade to 1000 GeV (1 TeV). Although early proposed locations for the ILC were Japan, Europe (CERN) and the USA (Fermilab), the Kitakami highland in the Iwate prefecture of northern Japan has been the focus of ILC design efforts since 2013. The Japanese government is willing to contribute half of the costs, according to the coordinator of study for detectors at the ILC.
The Very Large Hadron Collider (VLHC) was a proposed future hadron collider planned to be located at Fermilab. The VLHC was planned to be located in a 233 kilometres (145 mi) ring, using the Tevatron as an injector. The VLHC would run in two stages, initially the Stage-1 VLHC would have a collision energy of 40 TeV, and a luminosity of at least 1⋅1034 cm−2⋅s−1 (matching or surpassing the LHC design luminosity, however the LHC has now surpassed this).
The DØ experiment was a worldwide collaboration of scientists conducting research on the fundamental nature of matter. DØ was one of two major experiments located at the Tevatron Collider at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. The Tevatron was the world's highest-energy accelerator from 1983 until 2009, when its energy was surpassed by the Large Hadron Collider. The DØ experiment stopped taking data in 2011, when the Tevatron shut down, but data analysis is still ongoing. The DØ detector is preserved in Fermilab's DØ Assembly Building as part of a historical exhibit for public tours.
Roy F. Schwitters was an American physicist, professor of physics at Harvard, Stanford, and finally the University of Texas at Austin. He was also director of the Superconducting Super Collider between 1989 and 1993.
Joseph David Lykken is an American theoretical physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and, from July 1, 2014 to Sept 6, 2022, he was the Deputy Director of Fermilab. He is currently Director of Fermilab's Quantum Division.
The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? is a 1993 popular science book by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon M. Lederman and science writer Dick Teresi.
Stanley George Wojcicki was a Polish-American physicist and former chair of the physics department at Stanford University in California.
The Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5) is a scientific advisory panel tasked with recommending plans for U.S. investment in particle physics research over the next ten years, on the basis of various funding scenarios. The P5 is a temporary subcommittee of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP), which serves the Department of Energy's Office of Science and the National Science Foundation. In 2014, the panel was chaired by Steven Ritz of the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 2023, the panel was chaired by Hitoshi Murayama of the University of California, Berkeley.
The High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) is a permanent advisory committee to the United States Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, created in 1967 and organized under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) of 1972.
The Future Circular Collider (FCC) is a proposed particle accelerator with an energy significantly above that of previous circular colliders, such as the Super Proton Synchrotron, the Tevatron, and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The FCC project is considering three scenarios for collision types: FCC-hh, for hadron-hadron collisions, including proton-proton and heavy ion collisions, FCC-ee, for electron-positron collisions, and FCC-eh, for electron-hadron collisions.
John Peoples Jr. is an American physicist who served as Fermilab's third director, served as director of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and oversaw the shutdown of the Superconducting Super Collider.
Lillian Hartman Hoddeson is an American historian of science, specializing in the history of physics and technology during the 2nd half of the 20th century.
William J. Willis was an American experimental particle physicist.
Bradley Cox is an American physicist, academic and researcher. He is a Professor of Physics and the founder of the High Energy Physics Group at the University of Virginia.
Riordan, Michael (2001). "A Tale of Two Cultures: Building the Superconducting Super Collider, 1988–1993". Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences. 32 (1): 125–144. doi:10.1016/j.shpsa.2009.06.004.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
