Super colliderIn 1988, the Secretary Herrington of the Department of Energy announced that Ellis County, Texas would be the home of a $4.4 billion atom-smashing super collider. Since the Manhattan Project, the DOE and its predecessors had helped build most of the large particle accelerators in the U.S. The superconducting super collider would become the world's largest particle accelerator, the basic research tool in high energy physics for studying the nature of matter and energy. Research at the super collider would not only include study of the fundamental laws that govern the universe but also the exploration of the origins of the universe. However, support for the projectdeclined as cost estimates soared, and Congress finally voted in Oct 1993 to kill it. |
