Waxahachie, Texas. In the early 1990s, this quiet town south of Dallas was supposed to become the center of the known universe. Workers were already underground. They had bored 14 miles of tunnel into the chalky soil. The Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) was no longer just a blueprint on a physicist’s desk; it was a physical reality taking shape. Then, in 1993, the U.S. Congress pulled the plug. It was a brutal, sudden death for a project that would have dwarfed the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland. Honestly, if you look at the specs, the LHC is basically a toy compared to what the SSC was designed to be.
We’re talking about a ring 54 miles in circumference. The LHC? Only 17 miles.
The Superconducting Super Collider was designed to collide protons at energies of 40 TeV. For context, the LHC finally reached 13.6 TeV just recently. We are decades behind where we should have been.
The Machine That Could Have Found Everything
Physicists like Leon Lederman and Steven Weinberg weren't just looking for the Higgs Boson. They wanted the "Desert." In particle physics, the Desert is this massive energy gap where we expect to find nothing until we hit the scale of Grand Unified Theories. The SSC was powerful enough to trek deep into that wilderness. It was designed to find the "God Particle," sure, but it was also built to hunt for supersymmetry and the dark matter that makes up most of our universe.
The scale was almost impossible to wrap your head around. Because the ring was so large, the magnets didn't need to be as terrifyingly powerful as the ones at CERN, but they needed a lot of them—roughly 10,000 superconducting magnets cooled by liquid helium.
Why Texas? The Austin chalk. It’s a specific type of limestone that is remarkably stable and easy to tunnel through. It was perfect. By 1993, the project had already swallowed $2 billion. Seventeen shafts were sunk into the ground. People were moving their families to Waxahachie. Nobel laureates were setting up shop.
✨ Don't miss: What Is the Cheapest iPhone Right Now? What Most People Get Wrong
Then the politics got messy.
Why Congress Killed the Dream
You can't talk about the Superconducting Super Collider without talking about the International Space Station (ISS). In the early 90s, the U.S. budget was under a microscope. The Cold War was over. The "Big Science" blank checks were bouncing.
Congress basically looked at two massive "prestige" projects: a giant ring in the dirt and a giant house in the sky. They decided they couldn't afford both. The ISS had international partners—Europe, Japan, Russia—which made it politically "undieable." If the U.S. backed out, it would be a diplomatic nightmare. The SSC was mostly a solo American venture. That made it an easy target for the chopping block.
There were also massive management failures. The Department of Energy (DOE) wasn't exactly known for its lean startup vibes. Costs ballooned from an initial estimate of $4.4 billion to over $11 billion. Critics in Congress, like Representative Jim Slattery, argued that the money would be better spent on "small science" rather than one giant "monument to physics."
It’s kinda tragic, really. We spent $2 billion to dig holes and then spent another $400 million just to fill them back up and walk away.
The Lost Decades of Particle Physics
When the Superconducting Super Collider died, the center of gravity for high-energy physics shifted back to Europe. CERN became the only game in town. But because the LHC is limited by the size of the tunnel previously occupied by the LEP collider, it simply can't reach the energy levels the SSC would have hit in the late 90s.
We found the Higgs Boson in 2012. If the SSC had been finished, many experts believe we would have found it by 1998 or 1999.
Think about that. A fourteen-year lag in our understanding of the fundamental building blocks of reality.
But it’s not just about the Higgs. The SSC's energy ceiling was high enough that if supersymmetry (SUSY) existed at the scales many theorists predicted, we would know by now. Instead, we’re in a bit of a "crisis in physics." The LHC hasn't found anything "new" beyond the Higgs. No dark matter candidates. No extra dimensions. We are stuck.
What’s Left in Waxahachie?
If you go to Texas today, you can still see the remnants of the Superconducting Super Collider. For a long time, the site was just a collection of grey, empty warehouses and rusted equipment. A chemical company bought some of the land later. Most of the 14 miles of tunnel are flooded with groundwater now. It’s a literal tomb for 20th-century ambition.
🔗 Read more: Ubotie Keyboard Explained: Getting It Up and Running Without the Headache
There was a brief moment a few years ago where people talked about using the tunnels for data centers because the temperature is so stable underground. But the cost of dewatering and refurbishing the infrastructure was just too high.
The Future: FCC and Beyond
The ghost of the SSC still haunts modern physics. Now, CERN is planning the Future Circular Collider (FCC). It’s a proposed 60-mile ring. Sound familiar? It’s almost the exact same scale as the Texas project, just thirty years later and with a price tag approaching $25 billion.
We are finally trying to build what we threw away in 1993.
The lesson here is that science isn't just about the math; it's about the sales pitch. The SSC failed because its leaders couldn't convince a post-Cold War public that "pure knowledge" was worth the price of a few aircraft carriers.
What You Can Do to Support Science Infrastructure
If you’re interested in ensuring we don’t repeat the mistakes of the Superconducting Super Collider era, here is how you can actually engage with current science policy:
🔗 Read more: How to generate an image of a cake Washington style without it looking like a weird AI mess
- Follow the HEPAP Reports: The High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) provides the "P5" report, which outlines the next 10 years of U.S. physics priorities. Read it to see where the money is going.
- Support the DUNE Project: The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment is the current "big swing" for American physics. It’s located in Illinois and South Dakota. It needs consistent funding to avoid the SSC's fate.
- Contact Your Representatives: When the DOE budget comes up, send a quick note. Mention that you support "Big Science" infrastructure. It sounds nerdy, but those letters are tracked.
- Visit the Science Centers: If you are near Batavia, Illinois, visit Fermilab. Seeing the scale of these machines in person changes your perspective on what humanity is capable of building.
The Superconducting Super Collider remains the greatest "what if" in the history of science. We had the plans. We had the hole in the ground. We just didn't have the will. Now, we wait for the next generation to try again.