No, no, not the LHC – it’s not dead yet!
I remember when I was studying physics in college at Oklahoma City University, there was hub-bub surrounding a new particle collider being built and Oklahoma was bidding to build it in the state to help their economy, but the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) picked Texas instead.
$2 billion dollars of taxpayers money built that particle accelerator in Waxahachie, Texas during the late 80s and early 90s. (Incidentally, the Scarbarough Rennaissance Faire is in the same town.) But our Congress halted funding in 1993 and the facility has sat dormant ever since. It was sold in 2006, to become a top tier data center, but the guy behind that (J.B. Hunt) died and the facility is for sale once again.
I ran across an interesting photo essay about the SSC which reminded me of the whole thing. It’s worth a look if you like photos of abandoned buildings.
I think what gets me is how physics has been set back nearly 15 years when SSC got cancelled. The SSC would have been 3 times more powerful than the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that is just getting off the ground in Switerland (and having problem doing so). Both atom smashers were looking for the mysterious Higgs boson, also known as the “God particle” because theory says it gives everything mass. If the Texas super collider had been completed, maybe the bet between Stephen Hawking and Peter Higgs would have been settled before it ever started.
The Higgs boson theory was born in 1964, and we still have’t been able to carry out the experiment to test that theory in the last 45 years. I’m beginning to think that God doesn’t want his particle to be found. 
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September 15th, 2009 at 1:25 am
Let’s go in together and buy it for John. We’ll surprise him with it at Christmas! 8:-)
September 15th, 2009 at 2:27 am
Brenda – I’m a little shy on my half of the twenty million dollars
Let’s just tell him we’re buying it for him. Then it’s all of the fun and he won’t have to deal with multiple fixer-upper projects!
(I really would like to get in there with a camera – how about a renegade road trip?)
September 16th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
You’re on for the road trip! Too bad we don’t have the money because he really doesn’t own enough property yet. I keep telling him that until he reaches the point where he can’t remember how many properties he owns (I think he has 4 right now) he doesn’t have enough! 8:-)
September 19th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
I used to live a little ways outside of Waxahatchie in the 80s. And I used to go to the Ren Faire. I’m glad it to hear it’s still running. It was a blast! Especially the time a guy drank champagne out of my shoe. I’m hoping he was pretty drunk to begin with: summertime in Texas is not a good time for shoe freshness….
I’m sorry to hear the project was abandoned. I’m sure the local economy would have benefited from such a large project. But it also would have wrecked that nice little town and turned it into another Hillsboro/Beaverton, OR debacle.