АНУ-ын Техас мужид баригдаж байсан дэлхийн хамгийн том бөөмийн хурдасгуурын төсөл санхүүжилтийн асуудлаас болж бүрэн зогссон юм.
1980-аад оноос эхлүүлсэн “Superconducting Super Collider” (SSC) төсөл нь 87.1 км тойрог бүхий хонгилыг Техас мужийн Эллис тойрогт байгуулахаар төлөвлөж байв. Уг төхөөрөмж нь 40 тера-электрон вольт (TeV) хүчээр протоны цацрагуудыг мөргөлдүүлж, Хиггсийн бозон болон харанхуй материйн бүрэлдэхүүн хэсгүүдийг илрүүлэх зорилготой байсан юм. 1989 онд барилгын ажил эхэлж, 10,000 орчим хэт дамжуулагч соронз ашиглах төлөвтэй байсан ч 1993 оны аравдугаар сард АНУ-ын Конгресс төслийн санхүүжилтийг бүрэн зогсоожээ.
Төслийг хаах үед 22.5 км урт хонгил болон 17 нэвтрэх босоо ам бүхий 20 хувийн гүйцэтгэлтэй барилгын ажил хийгдээд байв. Анх 4.4 тэрбум ам.доллараар төсөвлөсөн өртөг нь 1993 он гэхэд 11 тэрбум ам.доллар давж, олон улсын зүгээс хүлээгдэж байсан санхүүжилт бүрдээгүй нь төслийн уналтад гол нөлөө үзүүлжээ. Удирдлагын тогтолцоо болон зардал хянах систем сул байсан нь эрдэм шинжилгээний хүрээлэнгүүд болон засгийн газрын хооронд үл ойлголцол үүсгэсэн байна.
Энэхүү төсөл зогссоны дараа олон эрдэмтэн физикийн салбарыг орхисон бол Европын цөмийн судалгааны байгууллага болох CERN нь Хиггсийн бозоныг илрүүлэх ажлыг амжилттай үргэлжлүүлжээ. Техасын газарт үлдсэн хонгилууд болон байгууламжууд нь хэзээ ч ашиглалтад ороогүй бөгөөд өнөөдөр тэдгээр нь дуусаагүй том байгууламжийн үлдэгдэл болон үлджээ.
Дэлгэрэнгүйг эх сурвалжаас харах
↓Эх сурвалжийг нээх ↓
Beneath fields near Waxahachie, Texas, 22.5 kilometers of tunnel remain from an American particle accelerator that was never completed. Congress terminated the Superconducting Super Collider in October 1993, leaving its underground passages, access shafts, and surface buildings without an operating machine.
The project called for an 87.1-kilometer circular accelerator beneath Ellis County, about 48 kilometers south of Dallas. Inside the ring, two proton beams would have traveled in opposite directions before colliding at a combined energy of 40 tera-electron volts, or 40 TeV.
Construction had reached about 20 percent when federal funding ended. Crews had drilled the tunnels, sunk 17 access shafts, and erected 18,600 square meters of buildings, according to a detailed Scientific American history of the project. More than $2 billion had already been spent.
The Collider Was Designed to Explore Fundamental Matter
A particle collider uses powerful magnets to guide fast-moving beams around a vacuum tube. When particles collide, detectors record the smaller particles and energy released, giving physicists a way to examine the basic structure of matter.
The Texas accelerator was designed to send each proton beam around the ring with an energy of 20 TeV. Its collision energy would have far exceeded that of any accelerator operating or planned when the design was approved.
About 10,000 superconducting magnets were expected to steer the beams. A superconducting magnet carries electrical current with almost no resistance when cooled to extremely low temperatures, allowing it to produce the strong magnetic fields needed to control high-energy particles.
The machine’s scientific program included a search for the Higgs boson and other particles not yet observed. Physicist John Gunion told Scientific American that the collider would have produced enough Higgs events to detect the particle, despite having lower beam luminosity than CERN’s later accelerator. Luminosity describes how frequently particles collide inside a machine.
Higher collision energy would also have allowed experiments to examine energy ranges beyond the Higgs boson. Those searches included possible evidence for supersymmetric particles and components of dark matter.
Construction Began After Years of Planning
Proposals for an American collider operating at tens of TeV developed during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Department of Energy moved forward with formal design work in 1983, and President Ronald Reagan approved the project in 1987.
Reagan’s science adviser encouraged the design team to be “bold and greedy,” according to Scientific American. Reagan later urged physicists to “throw deep,” language that reflected the scale of the proposed machine.
The Department of Energy selected Ellis County as the construction site in November 1988. Work began there in 1989, according to the American Institute of Physics history of the collider.
The planned ring would have circled Waxahachie underground. Surface buildings and vertical shafts would have provided access to the accelerator, its cooling equipment, electrical systems, experimental halls, and detectors.
By 1993, workers had excavated roughly two dozen kilometers of tunnel. The surviving sections formed only part of the civil engineering structure. The accelerator’s complete magnet system, beam pipes, detectors, and supporting equipment were never installed.
Costs Rose as Management and Funding Problems Accumulated
The original project estimate was $4.4 billion. By 1992, it had increased to $8.25 billion, and the estimate reached at least $11 billion by the fall of 1993.
Several major expenses had not been included in early estimates. A later Department of Energy review identified approximately $500 million for detectors, $400 million for pre-completion operations, $60 million for land, and $118 million for federal project management.
Changes to the magnet design added further expense. Engineers enlarged the magnet aperture after calculations indicated that more particles than expected could escape from the beams. Scientific American reported that the redesign increased projected costs by about $2 billion.
The project also lacked a fully functioning system for tracking its costs and schedule. Michael Riordan, a historian who studied the collider, said the Department of Energy wanted stronger management than it believed the high-energy physics community could provide.
“They did not trust they could get that from the high-energy physics community, and I think they were partially correct in that,” Riordan told Scientific American.
Oversight produced additional friction. The Department of Energy brought in managers with military and defense experience, while physicists were accustomed to the working culture of research laboratories. Audits, disagreements, and changes in leadership weakened confidence in the project.
International Funding Never Reached the Expected Level
Project planners expected Texas and foreign governments to contribute about $2.6 billion. Texas promised $900 million and had provided roughly $400 million when the collider was canceled.
Foreign contributions remained limited. India pledged $50 million, but the other countries approached by American officials did not commit funding. European governments were already concentrating resources on CERN, while negotiations with Japan became entangled with political and trade disputes.
The project’s presentation also created tension. A statement quoted by Scientific American described the collider as “an American project [with] American leadership,” even as the Department of Energy sought major financial contributions from other governments.
Burton Richter, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and former director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, later criticized the timing of the international negotiations. “It was a very bad mistake to seek funding only after the design parameters of the project were determined,” he said.
The collider also competed for federal support during a recession and a period of pressure to limit government spending. Congress was funding other costly programs, including the International Space Station, while the SSC’s projected price continued to rise.
Congress ended the project’s funding in October 1993. About 2,000 people were then working at the site or in Dallas, including approximately 200 scientists. A 1994 survey cited by Scientific American found that about half of the project’s scientists later left physics.
CERN Later Discovered the Higgs Boson
CERN’s Large Hadron Collider began operating in Europe years after the Texas project ended. In July 2012, scientists from its ATLAS and CMS experiments announced the discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson.
The Higgs discovery fulfilled one of the primary scientific objectives planned for the American collider. CERN’s machine operated at a lower collision energy than the proposed Texas design but produced collisions more frequently.
The cancellation did not end American particle physics. Researchers from the United States continued working at domestic laboratories and participating in international experiments, including those at CERN. The American Institute of Physics describes the project’s termination as part of a shift in high-energy physics leadership toward Europe.
The remaining Texas infrastructure never operated as an accelerator. Scientific American reported in 2013 that access shafts had been filled and surviving tunnel sections collected rainwater. The underground passages remain the unfinished foundation of a machine that never circulated a proton beam.
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