A tunnel dug for the giant Superconducting SuperCollider in Waxahachie, Texas. Congress cancelled the project in 1993.
Physicists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) delivered big news last week when they announced the almost certain discovery of the Higgs boson — the so-called “God particle” thought to be the key to the formation of matter, and life.
“If what they’ve seen is the Higgs boson, it’s an extraordinary achievement. If it is not the Higgs, it is even more exciting, opening the window to a whole domain of new physics,” said Neal Lane, Baker Institute senior fellow in science and technology policy and former science adviser to President Bill Clinton. “One way or the other, this discovery will expand our understanding of how the universe took shape.”
Scientists at CERN were able to detect what they believe to be the Higgs boson by firing particles around a giant, $10 billion circular tunnel at almost the speed of light, crashing them into each other and simulating conditions a fraction of a second after the Big Bang.
In 1991, an even bigger particle accelerator was under construction in Waxahachie, outside of Dallas. But the multibillion-dollar Superconducting SuperCollider (SSC), a conspicuous target for federal budget cutters, was cancelled by Congress in 1993. “We lost a decade or more of research and an extraordinary opportunity for Texas with that short-sighted political act. In the aftermath, we helped Europe build its own machine at CERN, where hundreds of American physicists now work,” said Lane, a physicist who at that time was provost of Rice University and was on an advisory committee for the Texas SSC.
In the current era of recession and retrenchment, funding for a next-generation particle accelerator will be an even harder sell, Lane added, and “that’s to our country’s detriment. Elementary particle physics is one of the most fundamentally important areas of modern science. It helps us understand the basic laws of nature and the origins and makeup of the universe we live in.”
“While funding is needed for education, health care and more, the payoffs of science, all fields of science — in potential spinoffs, the unpredictable discoveries, new technologies and the jobs that often follow — are worth the investment,” Lane said. “America is strong; the country is not bankrupt and our system is not broken, though some politicians, longing for the 1950s, would have us believe otherwise.”
“For the sake of our kids and grandkids, we should be looking forward, not backward, and thinking big. That’s how this country has always made progress — and science and technology have been the key.”
Neal F. Lane, Ph.D., is the senior fellow in science and technology policy at the Baker Institute. He is also the Malcolm Gillis University Professor at Rice University. Lane served as assistant to the president for science and technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from August 1998 to January 2001, and he served as director of the National Science Foundation and member (ex officio) of the National Science Board from October 1993 to August 1998. Before his post with NSF, Lane was provost and professor of physics at Rice, a position he had held since 1986.