

Urban Decay: Exploring an old abandoned particle collider facility - dstein
http://www.physicscentral.com/buzz/blog/index.cfm?postid=6659555448783718990&1

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jf
If you found this pictures to be interesting, you might also like some of
photo sets of other abandoned facilities:

Vandenberg Missile Sites:
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/tunnelbug/sets/7215762296233064...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/tunnelbug/sets/72157622962330649/)

A Missile Silo:
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/tunnelbug/sets/7215760341039595...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/tunnelbug/sets/72157603410395955/)

USA Refinery:
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/tunnelbug/sets/7215759418921441...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/tunnelbug/sets/72157594189214411/)

(See also: <http://uer.ca>)

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arethuza
Subterranea Britannica: <http://www.subbrit.org.uk/>

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JonnieCache
Also the UK Urban Exploration Forums: <http://28dayslater.co.uk>

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arethuza
Some interesting stuff on that site - I'd love to know _why_ there is an ex
Soviet submarine moored in the Medway.

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d2
In retrospect I think the collider would have been a better investment than
the ISS because it would have yielded science that has game changing potential
for us as a species and more science that we can use. I'd rather understand
what we're made of than know how flora and fauna behave in orbital space.

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tzs
What kind of game changing things are you thinking of? Colliders help us learn
what model is correct (or rather let us eliminate incorrect models) of very
low level physics. We don't remotely have any technology to do anything with
physics at that low a level, so isn't knowing which model may be correct
pretty much going to remain of theoretical and philosophical interest only?

It's good to figure that out, but it isn't going to change anything about our
higher level understanding of physics is it? By higher level I mean the
physics that affects chemistry and biology and material properties of interest
to engineers, and things like that.

A good strong space program, on the other hand, can give us over the next
100-200 years clean energy (solar collected from space stations, beamed to
Earth), resources (asteroid and lunar mining), better instruments for
astronomy (useful for answering philosophical questions about the origin and
ultimate fate of the universe that are arguably as interesting as the
questions colliders can help answer), better materials through zero G
manufacturing, and perhaps a defense against the next big meteor or comet
based mass extinction.

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m0th87
At some point electromagnetism was a "low level" theory, but now you've taken
advantage of all that basic research by typing that comment up in a computer
and publishing it for the world to see. The practical application of this sort
of stuff is rarely obvious, and sometimes decades out, but it's certainly
there.

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perlgeek
Same for quantum mechanics.

To understand semiconductors properly, you need quantum mechanics - once an
obscure theory that Einstein never accepted.

Today's hard discs rely on the Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR), an effect based
on the spin polarizations of electrons. Spin is a property that can _only_ be
understood with quantum mechanics, there's no proper classic theory (and I
guess there never will be) of spin.

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bitsm
Wow, crazy to see these pics. My dad worked at the SSC, managing the magnet
manufacturing facility. I remember touring some of these buildings, and seeing
some of the magnets. I still have a SSC mug at home. :)

In the end, I think it may just have been too much of an oxymoron to pair the
words "Waxahachie, TX" and "world-class research facility", it's just not
something most of America was ready to embrace.

It's too bad though, we really lost a great opportunity to build something
great in the middle of Texas. It would have changed everything there, that's
for sure.

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CoachRufus87
If I had the capital, I'd build a vast data center there. It seems like a
great location in the middle of the US.

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JonnieCache
Haven't we all read Cryptonomicon and dreamed of having sovereignty over our
very own impenetrable data-bunker?

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juiceandjuice
My friend's old advisor was director of the SSC when it got cut.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Schwitters>

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CoachRufus87
He was also my physics professor at UT. Great prof.

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rdl
When the SSC was cancelled, I decided I never wanted to be a scientist (I was
15 or so); it would be so horrible to work on a program like this and be
entirely dependent upon the government for funding, then have it killed.
Entrepreneurship seems much more incremental; if you raise 50% as much money,
you can still often do things, just with more risk and pain; if you have a big
grant funded science project, 50% in getting it funded gets you very little
more than 0% success.

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rhaygood
The death of the SSC kept me out of particle physics. I was thinking of
becoming a theoretical particle physicist, but I'm skeptical of doing theory
without frequent input from experiments - it may be mathematically elegant,
but it may well not be physics. I eventually went into biology, where there's
more data of some kinds than we know what to do with, albeit other kinds of
data we'd like are still hard to come by.

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perlgeek
> but I'm skeptical of doing theory without frequent input from experiments -
> it may be mathematically elegant, but it may well not be physics.

Sad that you didn't chose the path of science - we need more people with that
healthy scepticism.

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tzs
Biology is not science?

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The_Igor
Those who are interested in this topic should watch Urban Explorers: Into the
Darkness. It is available as an instant watch on Netflix.

[http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Urban_Explorers_Into_the_D...](http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Urban_Explorers_Into_the_Darkness/70075916?trkid=2361637#height1576)

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nhoss2
well if it was this vs the ISS, then they made a fantastic decision, just look
at the ISS now!

But too bad it had to be one or the other and not both.

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jswanson
Indeed.

Also imagine what could have come out of this by now had it gone online in the
mid 90's. They haven't even gotten the LHC up to full speed yet, but it's
already yielding interesting results.

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gills
'The cake is a lie' comes to mind...

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tjmc
Really does look like a set straight out of Portal or Half-Life. Hope someone
was carrying a crowbar...

