The SSC: A Machine for the Nineties

In July of 1983, the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel of the Department of Energy recommended that the highest priority be given to construction of a very large accelerator, the Superconducting Super Collider. The recommended energy per beam of this accelerator is 20 TeV, or 20 000 GeV—this is a macroscopic energy of about 32 ergs for each proton in the beam. Head‐on collisions of protons against protons will thus make 40 TeV available in the center of mass, more than 60 times the energy available at the present CERN collider and 20 times that to become available at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in the near future. The committee urged, moreover, that this facility be completed and available for physics research within about a decade. The solemnity of the advice was underscored by the simultaneous recommendations that all other proposals for high‐energy accelerators not be approved. This included both the Colliding Beam Accelerator, in which the Brookhaven National Laboratory had invested considerable effort, and the Dedicated Collider, a proposed expansion of the Fermilab complex.