Evan Dillahunt

Jane Blakelock
ENG 2100-31
Semi-Final Draft, Mar 15, 2016

Dollars and Sense

In October 2008 we see World Series winning Philadelphia Phillies

players run around like children and shower each other in champagne
because they know theyve accomplished what they dedicated their
whole life to.

Just six weeks prior on September 10, 2008 a similar

scene arose at the CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research)

headquarters in lieu of the first successful run of the Large Hadron
Collider in Geneva, Switzerland. The scientists behind the LHC actually
popped champagne in celebration of a small step to a big dream.
Teams from all around the LHC and scientists from all around the world
rejoiced as years of hard work paid off, and it was just the beginning of
what could be some of the biggest discoveries in the history of particle
physics.
Particle physics is a discipline of physics that is solely based on
the basic elements of nature. Centuries of study have led physicists to
one common theory of how they think the universe can be explained,
at least on the particle level. This theory is called the Standard Model.
The Standard Model suggests that everything in the universe is
constructed of just a few types of matter.

Peter Higgs is a British

theoretical physicist; in 1964 he calculated that in order for the

Evan Dillahunt
Jane Blakelock
ENG 2100-31
Semi-Final Draft, Mar 15, 2016

Standard Model to work, there must exist a central particle, a boson,

which transfers mass to adjacent particles.

Through the twentieth

century, scientists had experimentally revealed all parts of the

Standard Model with exception to Higgs discovery, the Higgs Boson.
The Higgs was the last undiscovered piece of the puzzle (Levinson
2014).
The basic concept of the Large Hadron Collider is pretty barbaric:
accelerate two particles to near the speed of light and smash them into
one another.

The vast amount of energy created represents the

moments just following the Big Bang Theory (Levinson 2014).

The

protons travel in opposite directions in an underground 17-mile loop

until accelerated to top speed, then are forced into each other.

In

order to get the protons to speed, the machine uses massive electric
fields to rapidly increase the speed. Once the protons have reached
top speed, electromagnets create a magnetic field that steers the
particles into one another. Cameras and sensors capture the instant of
the collision and those just following to retrieve information inside the
tunnel. Multiple stations inside the machine are each responsible for
collecting a specific set of data. The data sets are compared to one
another and eventually the information all comes together to form an
image that explains exactly what happened.

Evan Dillahunt
Jane Blakelock
ENG 2100-31
Semi-Final Draft, Mar 15, 2016

The celebration in September of 2008 seemed premature to

some, and in fact was, due to the endless number of trials that lay
ahead.

The next step in the process was colliding particles and

gathering some recordable data. Among the several groups or workers

that make up the Large Hadron collider, ATLAS and CMS are both
teams named after a component of the machine; Both are dedicated
to researching the Higgs Boson and dark matter (Levinson 2014).
Three years of trial runs and adjustments lead the teams to the first
sign of the Higgs Boson.

A couple spikes in data turned heads at

CERN, where some thought they might be on to the biggest discovery

in the history of particle physics. There is a statistical measurement
called 5 sigma, essentially a probably graph. David Kaplan explains
that if you reach height of 5-sigma, then you know youve seen
something that is statically too bizarre to be ignored (Levinson 2014).
In an article by Evelyn Lamb describing just how the 5-sigma concept
is used, she says that [F] or particle physics, the sigma used is the
standard deviation arising from a normal distribution of data, familiar
to us as a bell curve. (2012)
Rather than a news breaking reveal, the discovery of the Higgs
was nothing more than two years of diminishing skepticism. In 2013 it
was officially announced that CERN and the teams from the Large
Hadron Collider had data that paralleled the 5-sigma model. The Higgs

Evan Dillahunt
Jane Blakelock
ENG 2100-31
Semi-Final Draft, Mar 15, 2016

Boson had been discovered and the Standard Model of particle physics
was complete at last. In 2013, Peter Higgs received the Nobel Prize in
physics for his contribution to the discovery of the Higgs Boson, nearly
fifty years after he first suggested its existence.
Europe had been in the particle physics spotlight for decades,
but imagine if they werent. Rewind thirty years to Waxahachie, Texas,
where the United States plans to build a particle collider three times
the size of the Large Hadron Collider.

This Superconducting Super

Collider, or SSC, would make the United States the particle physics
capital of the world.

The blueprint included a 54-mile underground

acceleration tunnel and particle accelerators with higher energy levels

than that of the LHC. If the project had been completed, Peter Higgs,
in fact, might have collected his physics Nobel a few years earlier
(Appell).

The SSC aimed for construction as early as 1983 with an

original price tag of about 4.4 billion dollars.

Within ten years the

estimate cost had almost doubled to 8.25 billion dollars. In 1992 the
House of Representatives voted to shut down production, although the
Senate vetoed the idea. A year later the estimated cost to complete
the project rose to 11 billion dollars (Appell).

The Department of

Energy agreed to expend 1 billion dollars of funding, but even with

additional funding from the state of Texas the majority of the projects
funding fell unclaimed (Appell).

Foreign funding was expected from

Evan Dillahunt
Jane Blakelock
ENG 2100-31
Semi-Final Draft, Mar 15, 2016

several worldwide, but political issues blockaded any hopes of seeing

it. The USSR ceased to exist in 1991 eliminating them from the list of
possible funding choices.

A photo from Particle Fever of the abandoned warehouse that once stored the
Superconducting Super Collider.

Japan refused to pay for an American project with president George H.

W. Bush in office, while newly elected Bill Clinton showed no interest in
the project (Appell).

In 1993 the Superconducting Super Conductor

dream was abandoned by the government and never again returned to

production.

An article from Scientific American discusses how the

Texans that were forced out of their homes were content with the
inconvenience because they liked the idea that the country did super,
far-out things (Appell).

Evan Dillahunt
Jane Blakelock
ENG 2100-31
Semi-Final Draft, Mar 15, 2016

The SSC was no fluke in the United States dream of big science.
The James Webb Space Telescope is another American science project,
led by NASA. The Webb is the successor to the Hubble Telescope and
set to launch in 2018.

So it seems again that America will be a

worldwide leader in a major science field.

But similarly to the

Superconducting Super Collider, congress pushed to stop production on

the telescope due to high cost.

John Rigden and Peter Stuewer

compare the two by saying that Funding the SSC in 1193 would have
represented a vision for the future; similarly the Webb in 2011 would
represent a vision for the future (386).

Congresss battle against

funding science in the United States shows a consistency twenty years

later. (LaBeaud, McKeating 2351). In 2011, the Obama administration
granted $32.1 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (up $1
billion; 3.2% increase) and $7.4 billion for the National Science
Foundation (NSF) (up $550 million; 8% increase). This budget increase
has since been eliminated, and inflation continues to slowly erode the
purchasing power of remaining NIH dollars (LaBeaud, McKeating
2351). As science appears to be no major issue to the Unites States
government, [w] e wonder whether Congressmen cannot see the
long-term consequences of cutting the nations support for science
(Rigden, Stuewer 386).

Evan Dillahunt
Jane Blakelock
ENG 2100-31
Semi-Final Draft, Mar 15, 2016

With the Large Hadron Collider beginning construction just five

years after the discontinuation of the Superconducting Super Collider,
the two machines were juxtaposed on every level. And with hundreds
of newly jobless particle physicists, the new Swiss collider was an
enticing job opportunity. After the announcement of the construction
of the collider in Geneva, the United States began sending hundreds of
millions

of

dollars

(Riesselmann).

to

Switzerland

to

fund

the

new

project

This was unsettling to many Americans, including

Texan Senator Joe Barton.

Barton oversaw the district that included

Waxahachie, Texas. He was adamant about his opposition to sending

American dollars overseas to fund a project that the government
decided wasnt worth the money on our own soil (Marshall 1555).
Barton was a member of the House Science Committee in 1998, but
not part of the energy sub-committee and therefore had no say in how
the Department of Energy distributed money.
The United States failed to claim the Superconducting Super
Collider as the world capital of particle physics due to a government
shut down (Marshall 1555).

And 18 years later the government

discontinues funding for the James Webb Space Telescope, which

brings further question to Americas dedication to science and
engineering. (Rigden, Stuewer 386). In Rigden and Stuewers article
they state [A] nation is in decline when it loses its vision for the

Evan Dillahunt
Jane Blakelock
ENG 2100-31
Semi-Final Draft, Mar 15, 2016

future (386). In Bill Nyes new novel hes adamant about the direction
of our youth. He believes that the young people of today are the
engineers of tomorrow (Nye 5). As the CEO of the Planetary Society,
Nye spends his time coordinating and funding projects that involve
students and scientists of all ages. Bill Nye sees the funding cuts in
American and knows first hand how badly the country needs money to
continue[s] to be a world leader in discovery and innovation.

He

knows that if we suppress science in this country, we are headed for

trouble (Nye 5).

Credible authors and scientists from all over are

publishing work that all lead to the same economic question. If we cut
the funding for science in the United States, why would anyone want to
grow up to be a scientist?

Evan Dillahunt
Jane Blakelock
ENG 2100-31
Semi-Final Draft, Mar 15, 2016

Works Cited
Appell, David. The Supercollider That Never Was. Scientific American
15 Oct. 2013.
Web.
LaBeaud, AD, McKeating, H. The largest drought in American history:
funding for
science is drying up. PLoS Neglected Tropical
Diseases 7.8 (2013): 2351.
Web.
Lamb, Evelyn. 5 Sigma Whats That? Scientific American 17 July
2012. Web.
Marshall, Eliot. Texan Vows to Fight LHC Funding. Science Magazine
14 March
1997: 1555. Print.
Nye, Bill, and Corey S. Powell. Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of
Creation., 2014. Print.
Particle Fever. Dir. Mark A. Levinson. Athos Media, 2013. Netflix. Web.
18 Aug. 2014
Riesselmann, Kurt. The United States and the LHC. Symmetry 6 Aug.
2006. Web
Rigden, John, Stuewer, Roger. America in Decline. Physics in
Perspective 13.4
(2011): 385-386. Print.