Superconducting super collider
The Superconducting Super Collider ( SSC ) was a planned particle accelerator whose construction was canceled in 1993. Seat was Waxahachie , Texas south of Dallas , to be built an underground ring tunnel of 87 km in circumference in the environment in which, for example protons to up to 20 TeV should be accelerated, resulting in a collision energy ( mass energy ) of the particle in collider experiments of 40 TeV revealed. Director was Roy Schwitters .
The first design study was completed in 1983. In 1988 Texas was chosen as the site and construction began in 1991. By the time the project was discontinued by the US Congress in 1993, 22.5 km of tunnels had been completed and $ 2 billion invested. The discontinuation was preceded by a heated debate over the explosion in costs, which had risen from an initial target of $ 4.4 billion in 1987 to over $ 12 billion in 1993. Reasons were also the feeling that such prestigious projects would no longer be needed after the end of the Cold War with the Soviet Union and half-hearted support from the new rulers in Texas and the USA ( Bill Clinton ). In addition, since the budget was approaching that of the International Space Station, it was often argued that the country could not afford two such expensive projects and could also fund a large number of smaller research projects with the same money.
The hiring meant a heavy blow for experimental high-energy physics in the USA, and the leadership role went to the European CERN with the development of the Large Hadron Collider , which, however, with a maximum of 14 TeV does not come close to the energy of the SSC.
literature
- Muscle man in Texas . In: Der Spiegel . No. 25 , 1990 ( online ).
Web links
- SSC website (1995) ( Memento from August 16, 2000 in the Internet Archive )
Coordinates: 32 ° 21 ′ 51 ″ N , 96 ° 56 ′ 38 ″ W.