Synopses & Reviews
Starting in the 1950s, US physicists dominated the search for elementary particles; aided by the association of this research with national security, they held this position for decades. In an effort to maintain their hegemony and track down the elusive Higgs boson, they convinced President Reagan and Congress to support construction of the multibillion-dollar Superconducting Super Collider project in Texasandmdash;the largest basic-science project ever attempted. But after the Cold War ended and the estimated SSC cost surpassed ten billion dollars, Congress terminated the project in October 1993.
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Drawing on extensive archival research, contemporaneous press accounts, and over one hundred interviews with scientists, engineers, government officials, and others involved, Tunnel Visions tells the riveting story of the aborted SSC project. The authors examine the complex, interrelated causes for its demise, including problems of large-project management, continuing cost overruns, and lack of foreign contributions. In doing so, they ask whether Big Science has become too large and expensive, including whether academic scientists and their government overseers can effectively manage such an enormous undertaking.
Review
andquot;Tunnel Visions is the story of the national and international maneuvers to take the next big step in particle accelerators that had brought a string of Nobel Prizes to scientists in the U.S. and Europe: the Superconducting Super Collider. Though specialists will find much here of value, no specialized knowledge is necessary to find the story of the rise and fall of the SSC project fascinating. Focusing on the scientific, technical, and political conflicts that led to delays, ever rising costs, and eventually the SSCandrsquo;s cancelation by Congress, Tunnel Visions is a true techno-thriller.andquot;
Review
andquot;Riordan, Hoddeson, and Kolb meticulously piece together how regional and budgetary politics, mismatches between technical cultures, sniping from condensed-matter physicists, and administrative blindness by high energy physicists gradually turned the SSC, in Congressandrsquo;s eyes, into a monstrous, unsupportable boondoggle. Tunnel Visions is a layered, insightful story of a grand failureandmdash;and one of the first great histories of American physicistsandrsquo; painful transition into our post-Cold War world.andquot;
Review
andquot;Physicists create particle collisions so they can sift through the debris for clues to how nature is put together. The authors of Tunnel Visions see the SSCandrsquo;s demise as a saga of colliding communities, which they sift through for clues to understand the interactions involved in large scientific projects. This book raises important questions about how to build, coordinate, and manage the network of leaders, administrators, overseers, and congressmen needed for large scientific projects in the 21st centuryandmdash;and about how this network, if ruptured, can be repaired.andnbsp;This is a fascinating, well-researched account of a turning point in American science.andquot;
Synopsis
- Herman Wouk received the Pulitzer Prize in 1951 for his third novel, The Caine Mutiny. In the ensuing half-century, with the publication of Marjorie Morningstar, The Winds of War, The Hope, The Glory, and other abiding bestsellers, Wouk has secured a berth in America's literary pantheon.
Synopsis
With this rollicking novel-hailed equally for its satiric bite, its lightly borne scientific savvy, and its tender compassion for foible-prone humanity-one of America's preeminent storytellers returns to fiction. Guy Carpenter is a regular guy, a family man, an obscure NASA scientist, when he is jolted out of his quiet life and summoned to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. Through a turn of events as unlikely as it is inevitable, Guy finds himself compromised by scandal and romance, hounded by Hollywood, and agonizingly alone at the white-hot center of a firestorm ignited as three potent forces of American culture--politics, big science, and the media--spectacularly collide.
About the Author
Michael Riordan, a physicist and science historian, is author of The Hunting of the Quark and coauthor of Crystal Fire.Lillian Hoddeson, the Thomas Siebel Professor Emerita of the History of Science at the University of Illinois, is coauthor of Crystal Fire, Critical Assembly, True Genius, and Fermilab: Physics, the Frontier, and Megascience.Adrienne W. Kolb was, until her retirement in mid-2015, the Fermilab archivist. She is coauthor of Fermilab: Physics, the Frontier, and Megascience.
Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter 1and#160; Origins of the Super Collider
Chapter 2and#160; A New Frontier Outpost, 1983andndash;88
Chapter 3and#160; Selling the Super Collider, 1983andndash;88
Chapter 4and#160; Settling in Texas, 1989andndash;91
Chapter 5and#160; Washington and the World, 1989andndash;92
Chapter 6and#160; The Demise of the SSC, 1991andndash;1994
Chapter 7and#160; Reactions, Recovery, and Analysis
Epilogueand#160; The Higgs Boson Discovery
Appendix 1. Physics at the TeV Energy Scale
Appendix 2. List of Interviews
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index