You’ve probably heard of CERN's Large Hadron Collider, the home of the particle accelerator on the French-Swiss border which discovered the Higgs boson.
But you might not know that there’s an abandoned particle collider still hidden beneath Waxahachie, Texas that is three times as large and potentially three times as powerful as its European cousin. The Texas Superconducting Super Collider is around 87.1 kilometers (54.1 miles) in circumference, while the Large Hadron Collider is a comparatively measly 27 kilometers (17 miles) in circumference.
It begun construction in 1991 and had the potential to blast the United States to the forefront of particle physics. However, just two years later, Congress withdrew its funding and the project was cancelled amid a cloud of politics, money, and ego.
This video by Atlas Obscura, below, tells the sad and mysterious tale of Texas’ lost particle collider.
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