Why does historian Joseph Martin say America's Superconducting Super Collider failed?

Joseph Martin, a historian of science at Durham University, says the Superconducting Super Collider planned for Texas in the 1990s was built as a monument to national pride. Its organisers and politicians held off international investment to cement American supremacy in high energy physics, so when the Cold War ended and budgets tightened, Congress pulled the funding. Martin sees that as the moment the field shifted towards CERN's model of countries collaborating on a shared goal.

• Martin calls CERN a diplomatic exercise as much as a scientific one.
• Victoria Martin adds that the Texas site had no existing infrastructure, whereas CERN keeps reusing older accelerators, which cuts costs.

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on In Our Time (2026-10-22). Read the whole episode summary →

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