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By Root 1026 0

(SSC) that President Reagan approved in 1987 would have had almost three times the energy—had Congress continued its support. Although the Clinton administration initially didn’t support the project initiated by its Republican predecessors, that changed as President Clinton better understood what was at stake. In June 1993, he tried to prevent the cancellation in a letter to William Natcher, chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, in which he said, “I want you to know of my continuing support for the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC)…. Abandoning the SSC at this point would signal that the United States is compromising its position of leadership in basic science—a position unquestioned for generations. These are tough economic times, yet our Administration supports this project as a part of its broad investment package in science and technology…. I ask you to support this important and challenging effort.” When I met the former president in 2005, he brought up the subject of the SSC and asked what we had lost in abandoning the project. He quickly acknowledged that he too had thought that humanity had forfeited a valuable opportunity.

Around the time that Congress killed the SSC, taxpayers ponied up about $150 billion to pay for the savings and loan crisis, which far exceeded the approximately $10 billion the SSC would have cost. The U.S. annual deficit in comparison amounts to a whopping $600 per American, and the Iraq War to more than $2,000 per citizen. With the SSC we would have had high-energy results already, and we would have reached far higher energies even than the LHC will achieve. With the end of the S&L crisis we left ourselves open to the financial crisis of 2008 and a bailout that was even more expensive to taxpayers.

The LHC’s price tag of $9 billion was comparable to the SSC’s proposed cost. It amounts to about $15 per European—or as my colleague Luis Álvarez-Gaumé at CERN likes to say, about a beer per European per year during the construction time of the LHC. Assessing the value of fundamental scientific research of the sort taking place at the LHC is always tricky, but fundamental research has spurred electricity, semiconductors, the World Wide Web, and just about all technological advances that have significantly affected our lives. It also inspires technological and scientific thinking, which spreads into all aspects of our economy. The LHC’s practical results might be difficult to anticipate, but the science potential is not. I think we can agree that the Europeans in this case are more likely to get their money’s worth.

Long-term projects require belief, dedication, and responsibility. Such commitments are becoming increasingly hard to come by in the United States. Our past vision in the U.S. led to tremendous scientific and technological advances. However, this type of essential long-term planning is becoming increasingly rare. You have to hand it to the European Community for their ability to continue to see their projects through. The LHC was first envisioned a quarter century ago and approved in 1994. Yet it was such an ambitious project that only now is it reaching fruition.

Furthermore, CERN has successfully broadened its international appeal to include not only the 20 CERN member states, but also 53 additional nations that have also participated in the design, construction, and testing of instruments—and scientists from 85 countries currently participate. The United States isn’t an official member state, but there are more Americans than any other single nationality working on the major experiments.

About 10,000 scientists participate in total—perhaps about half of the total number of particle physicists on Earth. One-fifth of them are full-time employees who live nearby. With the advent of the LHC, the main cafeteria has become so packed that you could barely order food without your tray hitting another physicist—a problem that a new cafeteria extension now helps alleviate.

With its international population, an American arriving at CERN will be struck by the many languages