Superconducting Super Collider

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Hadron Colliders: Past, Present, and Future
Intersecting Storage Rings	CERN, 1971–1984
Super Proton Synchrotron	CERN, 1981–1984
ISABELLE	BNL, cancelled in 1983
Tevatron	Fermilab, 1987–2009
Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider	BNL, operational since 2000
Superconducting Super Collider	cancelled in 1993
Large Hadron Collider	CERN, 2008–2020s
Very Large Hadron Collider	mid-to-late 21st century

The Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) was a particle accelerator which was planned to be built in Texas. It was planned to have a ring circumference of 87 km (64 miles) and an energy of 30 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.

Contents 1 Development 2 Cancellation 3 Comparison of the SSC and the LHC accelerator 4 Current status of site 5 Movie production 6 Fiction 7 See also 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Development

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 23.5 km (14.6 miles) of tunnel were bored by late 1993.

[edit] Cancellation

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, but by 1993 the cost projection exceeded $12 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, 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, belief that many smaller scientific experiments of equal merit could be funded for the same cost, Congress's desire to generally reduce spending, and the reluctance of Texas Governor Ann Richards ^[1] and President Bill Clinton, both Democrats, to support a project begun during the administrations of Richards's Republican predecessor, Bill Clements, and Clinton's Republican predecessors, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. However, in 1993, Clinton attempted to prevent the cancellation by requesting that Congress 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..." ^[2]

The closing of the SSC held drastic ramifications for the southern part of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, and resulted in a mild recession made most evident in those parts of Dallas which lay south of the Trinity River.^[3] At the time the project was cancelled, 22.5 km (14 miles) of tunnel and 17 shafts to the surface were already dug and nearly two billion dollars had already been spent on the massive facility.^[4]

[edit] Comparison of the SSC and the LHC accelerator

The SSC was designed to reach a higher energy than its European competitor, the LHC, at CERN, Geneva (40 TeV against 14 TeV in the center of mass).

The latter resulted to be less expensive not only because of its smaller size, but also because of the already existing engineering infrastructure built to host the previous accelerator Large Electron-Positron Collider (LEP), which was hosted in a 27 km long underground cavern.

[edit] Current status of site

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 finally sold in August of 2006 to^[5] an investment group led by the late J.B. Hunt. Collider Data Center has contracted with GVA Cawley to market the site as a Tier III or Tier IV Data Center^[6]. The site is currently unoccupied. However the site is occasionally used by the military to conduct training exercises.

[edit] Movie production

While owned by Ellis County, Texas, the site was used for several different purposes, including storage for the county and the production of Jean-Claude Van Damme's 1999 movie "Universal Soldier: The Return".

[edit] Fiction

• John Cramer wrote the novel Einstein's Bridge which presents an alternate history in which the SSC was completed successfully. Dramatic events then require time travel and the alteration of history to save the earth and bring us to where we are today.
• A Hole in Texas by Herman Wouk is loosely based on the history of the SSC project.
• In an episode of The West Wing, Sam Seaborn, at the request of his former physics professor, battles a US Senator who has put an anonymous hold on the project.
• The Super Collider was the subject of one of the storylines during the 11th and 12th seasons of Dallas TV Series. In the storyline, J.R. beat both Bobby and Cliff to the punch at purchasing all the additional land around Ellis County.
• Super Collider is a wonder in the game Rise of Nations and its expansion pack Thrones and Patriots with the name Supercollider,being the only unbuilt wonder in the game.
• Super Collider is the fan name of a new Radiohead song, debuted at Malahide Castle, Dublin, on June 6th 2008.

[edit] See also

• Fermilab
• DESY

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• SSC website
• Tour [1]

Coordinates: 32°21′51.13″N, 96°56′38.57″W