The Supercon-ducting Super Collider

Introduction
The Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory (SSCL or SSC for short), what an odd name. Let me start by explaining the name. Superconducting refers to the technology used to produce the enormously strong magnets needed to build a particle accelerator capable of producing the energy levels of interest to high energy particle physicists. The superconducting magnets simply made up a huge "racetrack" for protons to travel around as they gain energy.

Super, refers to the size of the labs main accelerator known as the Collider. The Collider was an oval shaped accelerator the circumference of which was 54 miles. The Collider oval was located about 200+ ft underground and surrounded the city of Waxahachie, Texas. Click to see a map.

Collider refers to the main purpose of the laboratory, colliding protons into each other so scientists and physicists could study the resulting shower of smaller particles. Click here to see a computer representation of a collision event.

Laboratory, of course, refers to what the project was all about, experimentation that would lead to understanding the fundamental constituents of matter.

Much of what follows comes from the booklet, To the Heart of Matter - The Superconducting Super Collider. This booklet was produced by the laboratory during the early 1990�s. A bibliography follows that contains other references. I happened across the booklet that preceded this one during a visit to the Irving Public Library in 1991. I was fascinated by the project. A few months later I was employed by the laboratory. Even today, after the project is dead and gone I am still impressed by its mission and feel that telling it�s story may be of interest to others.


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This would have been the madest science project ever!!!!


What do you guys and gals think?