The Supercollider Was an Unreasonable Gamble`

Now particle physics in the United States is struggling to survive the d isaster of the Supercond ucting Supercollid er. The Supercollid er was a gigantic particle accelerator project that was canceled in 1 993 after about 3 billion d ollars had alread y been spent on it. The cancellation was a personal traged y for many of my friend s who had d evoted the best years of their lives to the project. But when I speak of the d isaster of the Supercond ucting Supercollid er, I d o not mean the cancellation of the project. The d isaster occurred five years earlier, when the promoters of the Supercollid er led the Congress and the public to believe that we could not d o any important particle physics for less than 5 billion d ollars. This belief was not only false but immensely harmful to the future of science. The harm would have been even greater if the Supercollid er project had been allowed to continue. Every big new machine is a gamble. If the gamble succeed s, the machine prod uces important new d iscoveries. If the gamble fails, the machine is a waste of money and time. A gamble is reasonable if you can afford to lose without being ruined . The Supercollid er was an unreasonable gamble because we could not afford to lose.

Notes:

Folksonomies: socialism government funding

Taxonomies:
/business and industrial/business operations/management/project management (0.583726)
/hobbies and interests/games/gambling (0.576840)
/science/physics (0.424399)

Keywords:
Supercollid er (0.967920 (negative:-0.462110)), particle physics (0.651134 (negative:-0.700415)), Supercollid er project (0.648403 (neutral:0.000000)), important particle physics (0.605477 (neutral:0.000000)), gamble (0.593826 (negative:-0.158536)), big new machine (0.586840 (positive:0.618666)), unreasonable gamble (0.582920 (negative:-0.777477)), Unreasonable Gamble` (0.556490 (negative:-0.700415)), gigantic particle (0.554787 (negative:-0.450500)), United States (0.534694 (negative:-0.700415)), personal traged (0.526612 (negative:-0.280894)), accelerator project (0.523064 (negative:-0.509009)), Supercond ucting (0.520013 (positive:0.271841)), new d iscoveries (0.508208 (neutral:0.000000)), isaster (0.482012 (negative:-0.053738)), cancellation (0.470448 (negative:-0.320338)), ollars (0.451148 (neutral:0.000000)), Supercollider (0.443667 (negative:-0.700415)), uces (0.436405 (neutral:0.000000)), harm (0.428255 (negative:-0.612056)), promoters (0.428243 (neutral:0.000000)), friend (0.426267 (positive:0.659871)), belief (0.424737 (neutral:0.000000)), lives (0.424667 (positive:0.659871)), public (0.423598 (negative:-0.279045)), Congress (0.423597 (negative:-0.279045)), future (0.422968 (negative:-0.714564)), science (0.422948 (negative:-0.714564))

Entities:
Supercollid er:GeographicFeature (0.912005 (negative:-0.512736)), Supercond ucting:GeographicFeature (0.214923 (positive:0.271841)), United States:Country (0.188292 (negative:-0.700415)), Congress:Organization (0.167986 (negative:-0.279045)), five years:Quantity (0.167986 (neutral:0.000000))

Imagined Worlds

Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Dyson , Freeman (1997), Imagined Worlds, Retrieved on 2015-05-31

Source Material [www.googleapis.com]

Folksonomies: science science fiction