Breaking Into the Super Collider 168
BuzzSkyline writes "A group of physicists went AWOL from the American Physical Society conference in Dallas this week to explore the ruins of the nearby Superconducting Super Collider. The SSC was to be the world's largest and most ambitious physics experiment. It would have been bigger than the LHC and run at triple the energy. But the budget ran out of control and the project was scrapped in 1993."
Great thinking. (Score:3, Insightful)
So, instead of the project being an over budget waste, they canned it so it could be a complete waste with no return. Brilliant.
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At the rate at which the graft was growing, the cost was going to approach infinity.
Re:Great thinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, instead of the project being an over budget waste, they canned it so it could be a complete waste with no return. Brilliant.
See: Sunk Costs [wikipedia.org]
Also, this thing was turning into a white elephant - between mismanagement by the physicists and cost over-runs (gee, from Government contractors?!? No way!) this was going to turn into a huge money pit. Anyway, the Europeans did it better
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Politicians, not physicists (Score:5, Informative)
Also, this thing was turning into a white elephant - between mismanagement by the physicists
The problem was not physicists but politicians. Large colliders like the LHC and SSC require a chain of accelerators of increasing energy to inject protons into them. The US already has just such a chain but in Fermilab near Chicago, not in the middle of Texas. As I understand it the decision to move the SSC from Illinois to Texas was made by politicians for political reasons. Since the entire lower energy accelerator complex had to be built from scratch in Texas this literally doubled the cost of the project.
The damage to US physics goes well beyond the loss of the project though. There were many non-US groups involved in the SSC and its cancellation has meant that many are extremely adamant that future international accelerator projects should not be built in the US due to a complete lack of faith in the US funding system.
Re:Politicians, not physicists - wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
For once, the politicians did the right thing, actually. These clowns weren't even in the same class as the guys are CERN. Hate to say it, I'm American and wish it were otherwise, but really, go read the reports. This was a bunch of people who thought conceptually trivial meant actually trivial. Nope, and most people outside ivory towers know that. Even some politicians.
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If you loo
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But calculating a level of certainty is, in fact, a theoretical exercise.
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European government conractors involved? (Score:2)
And the Europeans who "did it better" did it without government contractors? You left out any backing for your lame dig there.
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15 years later and at 1/3 the energy.
And 10 times the design luminosity.
The SSC was three times the radius, which explains how it was going to achieve three times the energy, as you're basically limited by how strong a magnetic field you can make to bend the particles around the ring. And its sheer sze must have also been a big part of why it was so damn expensive.
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Not to worry, someday someone will start up another super-collider project from scratch
I've actually seen this happen with some projects. The product is over deadline, so it gets cancelled. 6 months later a similar product gets started. Staff revives old design docs since they're still relevant. Management slaps them down and says "I told you we canceled that project!"
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Not to worry, someday someone will start up another super-collider project from scratch
Yep, the Chinese. And they'll actually get it done too.
Well, Some Businesses Still Benefited in Texas (Score:3)
I remember when Michigan was vying for this project, touting how it would enhance Michigan's scienterrific credentials, bring more research bucks to University of Michigan, etc. Now that it's in ruins, it would still fit in with much of southeast Michigan - the rust belt - Bay City, Saginaw, Flint and the Detroit area. I wonder if they could somehow turn it into an underground D&D theme park?
Paging Richard Garriott [geocaching.com]...
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You are in a single circular passageway, all alike.
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I took a look at Dungeon Masters Handbook, and it seems to devote quite a lot of pages on how to keep the players from straying from the tracks. Various Internet forums back this up. So why would a single-corridor dungeon be a problem?
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They really need to do a minecraft role play thing.
DM: "You are in a long and not very twisty tunnel all alike , you can go north, or south".
Player: "Fuck that *punches a hole in the roof with his fist*"
DM: "ssssssssssss"
it wasn't marketed properly (Score:2, Funny)
They should've called it the "Texas World Science Racetrack" and listed as one of the goals "Determine the conditions of the world at the time of its creation in 4004 BC".
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And that was the same year that Richard Feynman died.
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Well, seeing how the idea of a particle accelerator is to keep hitting the small and weak until they break so that you can profit from the wreckage, the name would had been quite appropriate.
the "Republican Revolution" killed the SSC (Score:3, Informative)
While expensive, the budget was not out of control. Gingrich & Co killed the SSC for ideological reasons.
Re:the "Republican Revolution" killed the SSC (Score:5, Informative)
Too bad Gingrich and Company didn't take command of Congress till 1994 and it was cancelled in 93. Democrats killed this one.
Re:the "Republican Revolution" killed the SSC (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't remember it that way. It was a "big science/little science" fight, if I recall.
The whole SSC thing got started under the Reagan administration, and I *especially* remember the impact when Reagan came in, because I was a student at MIT and had jobs in many research labs around the institute. The Reagan administration did a huge reorientation of the national research program. The Reagan administration had an ideology about research that pulled the plug on a lot of applied research, because that should be done by the private sector. The exception was in DoD funded research, which got a lot *more* focused on immediate applications -- specifically things that were immediately applicable to making weapons -- and so even DoD funded researcher felt the pinch. Although I disagree with Reagan's science policy, it kind of makes sense from their point of view. Making and using weapons is a legitimate government function in their view, as was research that was so far from having practical application that it could not conceivably attract any kind of private sector investment.
The SSC was the kind of thing that the Reagan could get behind. It was by no stretch of the imagination *applied* research. It was a big and showy counterargument to the charge that the administration was "anti-science", and in the grand scheme of things, the $4.4 billion was a pittance to an administration that was going to build a 600 ship navy, and which actually *doubled* federal spending over its tenure. The problem is you can't conjure a direction change in a nation's research establishment overnight. People are in the middle of their careers, and you can't conjure new careers out of thin air. A generation of researchers had to scramble harder than ever for funding, and the funds for the SSC would have purchased a *lot* of small science.
One of the political drawbacks with the SSC is that the economic impact couldn't be spread around the way defense contractors do to build a support base in Congress. Somebody elsewhere suggested physicists near losing SSC sites lobbied their congressmen to kill the SSC, but that doesn't really make sense. Once SSC was killed, nobody was going to build another one. The jealous nuclear physicists who would supposedly have an ax to grid would be better off having the SSC built in Texas than not built at all. But I do think it's likely there was a lot of political opposition from scientists who were "small science" advocates. Not that scientists of any stripe individually or collectively have much clout, but if legislators heard opinions from scientists on the project, the bulk of opinions were likely critical. The kinds of problems any project on this scale would have could easily be spun as imminent disaster.
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Killed Because It Was In Texas (Score:2, Informative)
No, it was killed by the politics of high-energy physics. In a nutshell, those working at the competing research sites who lost the bid to be the SSC location, basically got their congressmen to fight and kill the SSC project.
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polotics did get involved. The US built the SLA and was involved in paying for the LHC. I'm not surprised that funding for the SSC was withdrawn.A lot of europe and the US was involved in the LHC. Probably not a good plan as the SSC was a stunning idea. Not everything works out well.
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No, it was killed because...
I don't want to post spoilers, but the actual history is all documented in a book of "fiction" by a physics professor at the University of Washington.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein's_Bridge_(book) [wikipedia.org]
Superconducting Supercollider? (Score:2)
Did they have Aperture Science Super Colliding Super Buttons?
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This is inspiration for education (Score:5, Interesting)
This is just one of those short sighted things we do because missiles are more exciting that basic science. A generation of US scientists should be considered loss as a result, and a generation of people able to teach the next generation about science is lost as well. How many billions of dollars is being spent to bootstrap science programs based on pictures in books when we could have have science based on real world experience.
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We cannot just wave out hands around a beg and plead for students to study math and science, and for teach to competently present the subject. Without real experiences what will the teacher present? Without the ability to see real science what will the students learn?
Evolution or ID. It's the only thing that people are fighting over, thus it gets all the attention.
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These types of things, and these ruins specifically, tell kids that maybe getting an education is overrated. All the people involved in the SSC project had an education, but apparently not the power to prevent it from becoming a dollar black hole.
If I were a US citizen, I'd demand. that these installations totally disappear from the map and all references to it be removed from press, books and the internet, because the SSC incident represents a national science hall of shame.
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I'm a US citizen, and I want these installations to stand as monuments for how bad this country is for science, and as a warning for kids to not bother going into science, unless they plan to move to another country after they finish their degrees.
Trying to hide the truth doesn't help anything. We as a nation have to face the fact that we're quickly turning into a 3rd-world backwater, and there's simply nothing that can be done about it because it's what a majority of our citizens want.
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Then perhaps it should be put in a hall of shame, rather than erased from history? "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", and all that.
Oh, and George Orwell's here too. He'd like to have a few words with you.
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It is these types of things that inspire kids to get an education. It was frequent trips to NASA that inspired me to become a technical person. It was observing real scientists doing real science that taught me to be a scientist. We cannot just wave out hands around a beg and plead for students to study math and science, and for teach to competently present the subject. Without real experiences what will the teacher present? Dull facts out of books they have read. Without the ability to see real science what will the students learn? That these things are what far away people do, with no relation to their local opportunities.
Sadly, I understand that from the other point of view. My childhood was distinctly devoid of anyone or anything even remotely interested in science and engineering, and my school education seemed to take the attitude that 2 hours a week copying out of text books was all the science education a person would need (I had only 6 months of genuinely interesting science education in my whole school career- and only because my teacher for those two terms funded a great deal of experiments out of her own pocket).
It
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You forgot to mention the Dumbicrats. I wonder why?
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One would guess because the Democrats have never been known for anti-education or anti-science policies.
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One would guess because the Democrats have never been known for anti-education or anti-science policies.
Multiculturalism. Environmentalism.
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Care to explain how multiculturalism is anti-education? I have no idea what you are getting at. And while some environmentalists may not be well grounded in science environmentalism as a whole is not anti-science at all.
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Care to explain how multiculturalism is anti-education?
It's a dogma and indoctrination tool (often officially supported by the college) where everything is supposed to be questioned. The Democrat party uses it as a lightweight, low content deliverable.
In both politics and the college environment, it's used as a connotative shortcut for making some things right and wrong. I think that sort of thing is antithetical to education.
And while some environmentalists may not be well grounded in science environmentalism as a whole is not anti-science at all.
There are two recent examples: uncritical expenditures on "green" technologies (such as high speed rail and renewable energy) and atte
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What do you mean by "evolution isn't 'science' because it is a theory, and theories aren't science"? How is that any different from saying "a slice of bread isn't a sandwich"? Science observes reality, takes measurements, and produces theories. The theory of gravity and the theory of evolution are two such theories. That evolution and biogenesis are real phenomena isn't even a debatable proposition.
Frankly, if you want to understand biology, genetics, cellular metabolism, hereditary disease, etc., then you'
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Beautiful (Score:2)
Beautiful pictures! I woud love to explore a derilict building in that way.
Just like Chernobyl (Score:4, Funny)
They missed a great opportunity to bring motorcycle helmets with them and make a whole website about their 'ride' through the famed "Superconducting Super Collider Exclusion Zone".
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(Romulan ambassador Vreenak) IT'S A FAAAAAAKE!
That Slavic lady with the motorcycle is a fraud. It was all debunked a few years ago. She never did what she said she did. So sad, for her to need to lie like that.
Can we expect... (Score:3)
ruined conspiracy (Score:5, Funny)
I had a conspiracy theory that this thing was secretly completed underground. These pictures lower the chances of that being true. I'm sad. :(
Re:ruined conspiracy (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, that's just the decoy ruin. The real SSC was built nearby, but far enough away that anyone looking for the known SSC site wouldn't see the people going in and out of the real site!
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Dude, that's just the decoy ruin. The real SSC was built nearby, but far enough away that anyone looking for the known SSC site wouldn't see the people going in and out of the real site!
Why build one when you can build two at twice the price? I've seen that movie.
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Rich Got Richer/Poor Got Poorer/Science Got Fucked (Score:3, Insightful)
Reagan and his band of merry dolts didn't mind running the nation into massive deficit to give tax cuts to the rich and let the military run wild, but they couldn't allow spending on a science facility that might have actually gotten us somewhere. That wouldn't be as wise as giving corporations tax breaks to ship their factories overseas...(for the irony impaired, that was ironic).
Imagine if we already FOUND the Biggs particle, or the graviton, or figured out how to control the magnetic bottle around fusion. Twenty-plus years of research was lost so we could "save money", money we pissed away instead to cause the first tsunami of our current massive deficits.
It's "Keynesian nonsense" when the left does deficit spending; it's the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981" or the "Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001" when the right does it. Sigh... And always remember the "Tax Reform Act of 1986", billed by Reagan as "tax simplification", but where we lost the deduction for interest on consumer loans. Simplification my left testicle...
There is a special circle in hell for that bunch of idiots.
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No.. it's still keynsian nonsense.
The goal of an economy is to make the stuff. As in, the stuff that people want and need.
The government can try to guess what that is, but every hour of a worker's time that the government directs is an hour that isn't spent making the stuff.. It doesn't matter whether they "legitimately" took that time at the point of a gun, or sneakily took the time by printing more tokens when no one was looking....
This should be an easy challenge, right? find some examples of situation
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You do realise that your precious 'economy' wouldn't be worth a wank if not for thousands of years of government spending?
Pretty much every modern industry is the direct result of massive government stimulus. Left to its own devices, the market wouldn't have anything to sell at all. Even Walmarts ability to sell you some plastic junk from China wouldn't be possible without centuries of state investment in military technology. And you can forget aviation...
Of course all this is meaningless as the point of pa
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Oh? Where would it have gotten us?
Are they going to keep the results of LHC a secret from Americans? No? So, we don't have to spend any money AND we get all the benefits of basic research?
The research happened anyway. The only real problems are the experiments that cannot be done by the LHC because it's not big enough.
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There is a special circle in hell for that bunch of idiots
Actually, it's a torroid and you're not being fair. It's in purgatory and both sides of the aisle keep us spinning in circles there.
Blows away regular hiking. (Score:2)
Screw nature. I see enough trees and dirt every day. This kind of hike would be way more interesting!
Russian analogue: Protvino (Score:4, Informative)
For comparison, here are the photos of a similar abandoned Russian project (Google-translated):
Post 1 [google.com] Post 2 [google.com]
Note that the construction site is preserved rather than completely abandoned.
Wikipedia link [wikipedia.org]
Re:Russian analogue: Protvino (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, from the pictures it appears to be nearly completely abandoned - preserved sites don't have standing water on the floor.
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Given the amount of damage even small amount of water can do over time, the difference is semantic once you have standing water.
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Thank you for those links.
When looking at the pictures, did anyone else was reminded of underground labs in S.T.A.L.K.E.R or Metro 2033?
The Numbers (Score:3, Insightful)
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Scientists just need to find more corrupt politician buddies than the army jocks.
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Re:The Numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not 100% sure how having a bigger particle accelerator peen is that much better
Okay, let me spell it out for you in terms having nothing to do with the size of America's wang (and how did Florida enter the conversation anyway?):
A particle accelerator 3 times as powerful as the design spec for the LHC, 15-20 years earlier.
It's not about pride, it's about physics. Physics that requires high energies to explore. We're still waiting for the LHC to answer questions that we could have answered over a decade ago, and there are other questions the LHC can't answer which the SSC could have.
Instead, here we are in 2011, still waiting to find out if a fundamental prediction of our current physics will be borne out or if we need to rework it entirely. Just like we have been for decades.
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with particle accelerators, the bigger the better. Here's why:
If you want your collisions to produce really exotic products e.g. the Higgs boson, you need high energy collisions which means your particles have to be travelling really fast. If you want your particles to be travelling really fast, you need a lot of distance to get them up to speed. If you build your particle accelerator as a straight line, you only have so much distance to get them up to speed. If you build it as a circle, you effectivle
Herman Wouk, "A Hole in Texas" (Score:3)
It's not the greatest book in the world.
It's not Herman Wouk's greatest book.
But Herman Wouk's 2004 novel, "A Hole in Texas" has got to be the best romantic comedy about the Superconducting Super Collider ever written.
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It still wouldn't have been the biggest a-hole in Texas.
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False dichotomy. (Score:5, Insightful)
It wasn't a choice between ISS and SSC.
We could have bought 5 SSC's for what it cost to develop and field the F-22.
And, at current estimates, not doing F-35 could have built 80 SSCs.
Never underestimate the sophistry of lobbyists trading off your money for their goals.
Budget out of control - Not! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Looters. (Score:2)
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Supercollider? I just met her! (Score:2)
And then they built the supercollider.
heh, i remember that (Score:2)
this guy i know from college was working on that project until it was cancelled. a real bummer: we should be doing more cool science in america than europe.
SSC was doomed from the gitgo (Score:2)
By comparison (Score:5, Informative)
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Compare to the sheer amount of handouts the Retardicans have handed to their robber baron oil buddies.
Then wonder why the American scientific and education communities keep getting hosed by the Retardicans, party of tax breaks for billionaires paid for by pay cuts to the poor and middle class.
Re:By comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
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Exactly. It's like "good cop bad cop", with "good" and "bad" depending on who's in power at the moment, and which issue you're discussing. The Democrats had control of Congress between 2007 and 2010, and control of the White House too between 2009-now, and despite a 2-year period there where they could have done pretty much anything they wanted, all they did was whine about Republican "obstructionism" (what, control of two branches of government isn't enough to cut out the silliness?), and do nothing but
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Compare to the sheer amount of handouts the Retardicans have handed to their robber baron oil buddies.
Then wonder why the American scientific and education communities keep getting hosed by the Retardicans, party of tax breaks for billionaires paid for by pay cuts to the poor and middle class.
Evidently you missed the story today about how GE made $5 billion in profits, and not only paid nothing in US taxes, but actually received a tax rebate of $3.2 billion.
Hate to break it to you, but the "Retardicans" are not in control any more. Who are you going to blame for this?
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Hate to break it to you, but the "Retardicans" are not in control any more. Who are you going to blame for this?
Do you really have to ask? Obviously its gotta be George Bush. ;-)
And of course everything will be Barrack Obama's fault as soon as the next guy gets in office. It's a vicious cycle we seem to be caught in .
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That's why I always blame future presidents.
And our current economic crisis, not to mention the loss of the SSC, are clearly the fault of President Bieber!
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That's why I always blame future presidents.
And our current economic crisis, not to mention the loss of the SSC, are clearly the fault of President Bieber!
What will President Schwarzenegger be blamed for?
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What will President Schwarzenegger be blamed for?
Well, terminators is the obvious answer, but I'm blaming him for his predecessor, President DeVito.
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Hate to break it to you, but the "Retardicans" are not in control any more.
Um they're in control of the branch of government that is in charge of the tax code and education and science funding and damn you're an idiot.
We're talking about 2010 taxes. Who was in charge of "the branch of government that is in charge of the tax code" then?
Now, who's the idiot?
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Don't forget the $1 trillion+ these stupid, useless wars are costing. Or all the money spent enforcing Prohibition against naturally-growing plants.
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You can't reasonably compare budgets for scientific research that may or may not eventually produce usable results after many years to loans for critical infrastructure without which our country would not function.
Re:Edit (Score:5, Informative)
Actually despite initial reservations, Clinton urged Congress to continue funding it. Congress opted not to do so due to costs associated with developing the ISS.
Unrelated note: if you haven't clicked on TFA, you should. Don't worry, it's mostly pictures.
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I give, if they can't sell it, just how much money are they trying to sell it for?
it's a huge tract of land. The accelerator was 20 miles in diameter.
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Nah, we're using the proceeds of that to cure all disease, end all war, and meld this universe with one in which magic works.
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http://goo.gl/maps/44af [goo.gl]
http://ludb.clui.org/ex/i/TX3155/ [clui.org]
Google "Superconducting Super Collider address". Third result.
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You can read the details in John Cramer's documentary; Einstein's Bridge.
IIRC, they also promoted a second rate software interest run by a guy named Gates in order to cripple the Internet and hamper the exchange of scientific ideas and data.
I wouldn't put it past them to have invented Twitter as well.