![]() ![]() Carlo Rubbia, won the Nobel Prize for the discovery, ending a 30-year domination of American high-energy physics. The next year, two European physicists, Dr. In 1983, physicists at the European Center for Nuclear Research discovered two particles, known as the W and Z particles, which were two of the last firm predictions of the standard model. This would recreate the conditions of the universe when it was one 100-quadrillionth of a second old, and make possible the discovery of predicted particles like the Higgs boson, which is believed to be the entity that gives mass to all other matter. But to go beyond the standard model, they believed, would require a particle accelerator capable of colliding beams of elementary protons together with an energy of 20 trillion electron-volts. They had created a theoretical understanding of the nature of the fundamental forces and particles in the universe, known as the standard model, and considered one of the great intellectual achievements of the century. The project began as a dream of theoretical physicists almost 20 years ago. Roy Schwitters, director of the SSC Laboratory. ![]() "It got pretty hysterical toward the end," said Dr. While physicists, administrators, contractors, accountants and members of Congress sniped at each other, embarrassing memorandums were divulged to the press and watchdog agencies. Sidney Drell, deputy director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory, likened to "the Russian management system minus the word Communism." Supercollider physicists and staff members talked about living under a microscope, dogged by endless audits, inspections and investigations, and suffocated by a complex bureaucracy of overseers that Dr. And life at the SSC Laboratory in Waxahachie, Tex., had become an exercise in frustration and anxiety. The project had begun to emanate an aura of dishonesty, antithetical to the motivations of those scientists who began it. ![]() Many researchers, including physicists, were privately elated at the death of a project they believed was furiously swallowing research dollars that were in short supply. Not all scientists were sorry to see the supercollider go. Cost estimates ballooned with each Congressional hearing, from $8.25 billion to $11 billion to $13 billion just before the end. In the last six months, the project had become the target of accusations of mismanagement. "And then Congress, in its infinite wisdom, said 'Oops, no.' The future does not look bright."īut even the supercollider's staunchest supporters admitted that over the years it had become a choice target for budget cutters. "We went at this with the painfully derived support of three administrations and got it 20 percent finished," said the Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman, a prominent backer of the project. ![]() The death of the project stunned its supporters. The new crop of freshman Representatives no longer accords big science the prestige it enjoyed during the cold war, and their opposition proved overwhelming. How did so grand a venture stumble so badly when the physicists who had skillfully sold the project to the White House and Congress seemed so well in control of its political protection? Despite an auspicious beginnings, the project's leaders appear to have failed to sense the changing mood in Washington toward big science. AFTER the expense of $2 billion and 10 miles of tunnels dug beneath the Texas chalk, the largest pure science project ever attempted, the superconducting supercollider, was killed last week in an emotional Congressional session. ![]()
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