appropriations system, Congress had the ability to cut off funding to the SSC when Big Science and high energy physics fell from grace. Peoples added, “That just doesn’t happen anymore.” By 1993, basic research in high energy physics was no longer viewed as a weapon - which, according to the U.S.’s guns over butter attitude, meant that it was no longer a priority.ĭue to the annual nature of the U.S. So it’s no surprise that when Robert Wilson asked for money to build his weird dream lab, Congress gave him 90 million dollars (about a billion dollars in today’s money) and essentially said, “If you can really spend that much money, come back later.” After relaying that anecdote, Dr. Peoples eloquently put it, “The Cold War was really, really important for the whole idea of, I would say, Big Science that can only be justified in terms of what it does to advance knowledge.” During the arms race in the decades that followed, investment in high energy physics research was thought to be essential to the nation’s survival.
spent billions in the middle of a war to build a secret town in the mountains of New Mexico and stock it with thousands of the world’s best scientists. Just think about the Manhattan Project: the U.S. The reason: the Cold War.īy the time the atomic bombing of Japan ended World War II, high energy physics was already enjoying a privileged place when it came to government funded science. But while pulling the plug on the SSC may have seemed like a smart fiscal decision to federal lawmakers in 1993, such a move would have been considered wildly irresponsible in previous decades. Indeed, the initial estimate for building the SSC was $5.9 billion and by the time it was cancelled, it was expected to cost at least $11 billion. John Peoples, “If something goes this bad, everyone has a hand in it.” When the SSC is discussed at all these days, the narrative is usually reduced to the idea that the project was so over-budget and behind schedule that Congress had no choice but to kill it. This is partly because, in the words of former Fermilab director and self-identified “funeral director of the SSC” Dr. The story has never been told in its entirety. But why? Why was the lab abandoned? Why was so much of it built at all? What happened to the Superconducting Super Collider?
So just as we suspected, there is a ghost lab in East Texas, complete with half empty frappuchino bottles on the counters and haunting footprints on the carpets. The above recording is what it sounded like to stand on this spot. Despite talk of turning the site into a mushroom farm or a data center, the site hasn’t been used for much other than a filming location for Universal Soldier: The Return, which even we aren’t curious enough to watch.īut wondering about what’s actually there, Nick and I decided to search for its remains on our way from Chicago to Los Alamos. Today, several of the buildings and 14 miles of the planned 54-mile-long tunnel sit abandoned in the Texas desert - the tunnel intentionally filled with water in order to preserve it. Had it been completed, we would probably not be waiting with bated breath for the hints of the Higgs Boson from the LHC: the Higgs and a slew of other physics would most likely be among the recent accomplishments of jubilant experimental physicists.Īlas, after ten years of planning and $2 billion in construction costs, Congress pulled the plug on the project in 1993. Slated to begin operations in 1999 in Waxahachie, Texas, the SSC would have been nearly three times as powerful as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
The Superconducting Super Collider is rarely discussed anymore, but its ghost has haunted high energy physics for the last 16 years.
The site of the abandoned Superconducting Super Collider.
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