Excerpt: The Texas Superconducting Super Collider would have dwarfed CERN’s LHC, according to reports. It was designed as an enormous underground ring complex situated close to Waxahachie and had it been allowed to go forward, would have been considered the most energetic particle accelerator in the world. The project’s construction commenced in the early ‘90s, but only 14 miles of tunnel were bored-out prior to the sunsetting of the whole thing.
Ah, the SSC. I lived about 20 minutes from Waxahachie in the early 90s, cancelling the project messed up the local economy. My family’s house was suddenly worth way less than when we had bought it. We wound up moving away in 94 and had to pay the difference.
I think a lot about what the area would have been like if the SSC had been completed (and how bad the traffic might have been).
We could have had CERN, but we were short sighted and tight-assed.
This is all from recollection, but –
The other site in the running was adjacent to Fermilab in Batavia, IL. It would have cost much less to build there, because it would have used the existing ring as a pre-accelerator, and the human capital necessary was already in the vicinity. Not only was it going to be more costly to construct in Texas, it would be more costly to maintain as well; I recall something about the insect population in Texas being much more detrimental to the concrete.
This was all being planned and organized in the 1980s, and I think Bush being Vice President (and then President through 92) may have had something to do with it going to Texas.
The way I remember it as well.
*under superconstruction
Was going to recommend BobbyBroccolis video but OP was already on it.
Quite the story!
Seeing how crazy republican Texas has become, I think it’s a good thing CERN isn’t there. Sad they killed ssc though.
Who owns the tunnels now?
The most stereotypical looking Texan businessmen possible bought it to turn into a data storage center.
Then he slipped on some ice and died.
Currently is owned by Univar Solutions, a chemical manufacturing and packaging company, which is a less exciting ending.
FYI Texans don’t dress like this, rich idiotic chuds dress like this
Since the last hbomberguy video I’m a bit sceptical about long format youtube essays by random youtubers. Should I watch this? I havent heard about this broccoli guy before, but on tvtropes they write that the third part of this video was removed originally due to a copyright claim: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=16506531060A47749600&page=1#comment-3
Isn’t this just some wiki articles read out loud, right?
Bobby broccoli is legit.
I have a very small personal stake in one of the scientific fraud videos (I was a grad student with one of the profs that brought the Hendrik Schon thing crashing down) and we talked about it in the Reddit comments of his first video. He definitely knows what he’s talking about.
In fact, if anything, his videos err more toward the side of “insider drama normal people never heard of or care about” than “dry regurgitated facts”.
