More about Waxahacie. Why we need it badly.

I dug out further in Leon Lederman  1993 book God Particle. If the universe is the answer, what is the question?  as a continuation of my article Waxahacie, Fermilab and President Obama.

This is how the road from Miletus to Waxahacie looked like in the mind of the Nobel Prize physicist

Figure 1: The road leading to Higgs discovery should have had gone
 through Waxahacie
Refering to the 80's and 90's, Lederman wrote
...something pervades this empty space and provides atoms with an illusory weight. That "something" will one day manifest in our instruments as a particle.... In the meantime (1993)  nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is a illusion,
Using the benefit of the hindsight, 20 years later - 2013 -  here is how the last segment from the red circle appears to be today.

Fig. 2: The final segment from Leon Lederman Roadmap
from Miletus to Waxahacie
 For over half a century we looked to discover the Higgs boson. We did: not in Waxahacie,(outside Dallas Texas)  but in Switzerland.

We could divide the time in two parts:

  1. The world hoping that Higgs boson exists 
  2. The world knowing that Higgs boson exists
Here is the irony. Now post-Higgs-discovery age, LHC is shut down for two years, Fermilab Tevatron is closed  and we do not have on the entire planet not even one collider decent enough to do high energy physics, The only dot in the world after Higgs discovery is the Burger  King. They are still in business.

The SSC Waxahachie site was "for sale on an “as-is basis.” On February 2012, a local company with 250 employees , Magnablend, bought the property. Here is the FAQ on why they did it. and a quote:

Q: Will Magnablend use the tunnels?
A: No. The tunnels have already been closed, filled, and are inaccessible. We will continue to keep them closed and unused.

Interesting what it will happen now. I imagine Maganablend will happily sell the property at a handsome profit. The employment SSC will generate is exponentially higher than Magnablend. But this is a headache, a battle no one seems prepared to fight. 

Except a few bloggers like me.


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Waxahachie has an exotic name, but it's is just a few miles south of Dallas, Texas It has the best hotels and  has the best steak restaurants in the nation.

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