Much has been made of the apparent discovery announced last
week of the Higg’s boson from CERN on the Swiss-France border. Of course there are a lot of America
scientists working at CERN, but the work is being done in Europe, not America; the
center of this intellectual activity is in Europe, not America; the associated
jobs are in Europe, not America; the bright young physicists who will make the
discoveries of the next few decades are drawn to CERN in Europe, not America.
America
could have hosted this discovery, and done so years ago, and been the center of
this work. The Superconducting Super Collider, with more energy (20 TeV) then
CERN’s (14 TeV) was being built in Texas
until Congress in its short-sighted wisdom cancelled the project in 1993, even
though almost 15 miles of the 54 mile tunnel had already been bored.
The estimated total cost of the Superconducting Super
Collider had risen to about $12 billion, which seemed to Congress like a lot of
money, though Congress apparently can, for example, justify paying farmers
about $20 billion A YEAR in farm subsidies. And the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already cost us something
in the range of $3.4 trillion, or almost 300 times more than the Superconducting
Super Collider would have cost us.
It makes one question the wisdom of Congress -- as if other
events hadn’t already made us question their widsom.
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