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rfmcdonaldWhat is ultimately responsible for the collapse of the world economy? A letter-writer to the Financial Times blames the decision to cancel the Superconducting Super Collider, a massive particular accelerator that would have been built in Texas.
Sir, “Give me a billion dollars for my accelerator or I’ll kill your economy.” These words should strike terror into the hearts of bureaucrats everywhere. And the next time they hear them, those responsible for funding big science should immediately just hand over the money.
As your article (“Of couples and copulas,” April 25) on David Li describes, the flood of theoretical physicists, aka the “quants”, coming into Wall Street after the cancellation of the SuperConducting Super Collider (SSC) created the financial weapons of mass destruction whose power to annihilate wealth is now obvious.
With the loss of trillions of dollars throughout the world economy, how much safer we all would have been if Congress had just paid the ransom over a decade ago and kept all those physicists safe in their laboratory at the Waxahachie, Texas, site of the SSC. So, please, listen carefully when I say that we have one or two major space telescopes that need funding. Otherwise I might consider moving to Wall Street.
Charles Beichman,
Executive Director,
Nasa ExoPlanet Science Institute,
California Institute Of Technology, US
