What is a Superconducting Supercollider?
The Superconducting Supercollider, or SSC for short, would have been a particle accelerator of gargantuan proportions, nicknamed the ‘window on creation’ for its proposed ability of recreating some of the conditions present at the time of the Big Bang itself. It was to be built near Waxahachie, just outside Dallas, Texas, USA. It was first conceived of in 1978 at workshops of the International Committee on Future Accelerators where a powerful particle accelerator was discussed. Then in 1982, the Snowmass Summer Study that was sponsored by the Division of Particles and Fields of the American Physical Society discussed the project further. It was predicted that it would have taken around nine years to complete (from 1991 to 2000), costing nearly $12 billion, which was over twice the original estimate. The device would have accelerated beams of protons (particles found in the nuclei of all atoms) around an 87km (54 mile) long tube until they were travelling extremely close to the speed of
