Ronald Reagan & the Biggest Failure in Physics

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This is a story about the greatest failure in American physics: The Superconducting Super Collider. It's a story that involves 3 presidents, billions of dollars, the Higgs boson, and Star Wars. This is part 1 of 3.

The primary source on all things SSC is the book "Tunnel Visions", which I used as a blueprint to map out the series. Many of the quotes are taken from that book, which used primary interviews and are sourced very extensively. Stuff involving budgets and congress I accessed from the official government websites, including votes on bills and amendments, and inflation calculations were done by myself using an online tool. There are a bunch of other documents I read through such as "The Global Research and Development Landscape and Implications for the Department of Defense", "A TIMELINE OF MAJOR PARTICLE ACCELERATORS", "United States nuclear forces, 2019", "High Energy Physics Advisory Panel's Subpanel on Vision for the Future of High-Energy Physics May 1994", "The Intellectual Spoils of War? Defense R&D, Productivity and International Spillovers", "Accessory to War by Neil DeGrasse Tyson", "The Mission by David W Brown", "The God Particle by Leon Lederman".

0:00 The November Revolution
11:47 How the Sausage Gets Made
22:53 Mount Gipper
37:09 Maury, Magnets and Mayhem
44:39 Nothing Personnel
52:45 The Great American Lottery

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Thumbnail assistance from @Hotcyder

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Did you know I have a Twitter and Patreon? The rumours are indeed true. Check the description.

FOOTNOTES: BEST READ AFTER YOU'VE WATCHED THE VIDEO. Given how vast the scope of this topic is, I thought it'd be best to provide some extra details for those interested.

1. All monetary values have been adjusted for inflation and are expressed in constant 2021 US dollars. I’ve researched to the best of my ability based on the dates and values I was able to find, but there are likely a few instances where the inflation calculation is off by a year or two. However, the orders of magnitude are what’s important in this story, and minor calculation mistakes should not detract from the story. Occasionally I will reference funding for Fiscal Year 19XX. For example, Fiscal Year 1989, this refers to funding allocated by congress in 1988, but which was made available to the project in 1989.

2. I often use the terms “accelerator” and “collider” interchangeably. It would be most accurate to say that all colliders are accelerators, but not vice versa. Colliders are any device that speed up two beams of charged particle going opposite directions, and smash them into each other.

Edit: "Most modern accelerators tend to be colliders." I read this line somewhere (or some variation of it) and as pointed out below it is likely not correct.

3. Oftentimes particle physicists will express a particle mass in terms of electron volts, or eV. This is because mass is directly related through E= mc^2, and is the widely adopted convention. The total collision energy that can be generated by a collider is often much higher than the mass of a particle that the collider is trying to create. This is because much of the collision energy is lost in the collision to other factors, and only a small amount goes towards the creation of a new particle.

Edit: As pointed out below the point regarding total collision energy far exceeding the particle energy is only true for hadron colliders, not all colliders (i.e. lepton colliders).

4. I’m making a lot of generalizations when boiling collider design down to just 3 components. The balancing act between collider size, magnet strength, and max energy is also a simplified picture, but mostly holds true. For further reading look up braking radiation or Bremsstrahlung radiation and how it limits collider design.

5. Although it’s called the November Revolution, the work leading up to the joint discovery took place over the summer at both SLAC and Brookhaven. And the standard model was first shown off at a conference in July. The November part comes from the joint announcement on November 11th. If you know your science history you may know that evidence of the 3-quark model actually dates back as far as 1968, however even though it was enough to convince some physicists there were still some conflicting interpretations, with many preferring Feynman’s model. It was the discovery of the charm quark in 1974 though that united most of the community on the quark model.

6. Also as a point of clarification, the particle discovered in the November Revolution was a hybrid particle consisting of the charm quark and its antimatter equivalent. This bound state is known as a meson, and it’s the meson that was named J/Psi, not the quark on its own. The meson’s discovery was considered sufficient evidence for the 4th quark, hence why it was such a big deal. For reference, a hadron is any combination of two or more quarks, which can be further categorized into mesons and baryons. Mesons consist of even numbers of quarks and anti-quarks, most often 1 and 1. Baryons consist of odd numbered quark combinations, and include protons and neutrons, among many more exotic ones.

7. I considered including the hypothetical graviton to the standard model as it would be the boson that mediates the force of gravity. However I’ve found that many versions of the standard model exclude it as there have been no successful attempts at unifying gravity and quantum mechanics as of yet. Since it never comes back into the story I decided it was better to leave it out.

8. The cost to build America’s previous 4 major accelerators are difficult to estimate as some were built at pre-existing labs, and others from the ground up. However regardless of how the costs are calculated they were still “baby” machines in comparison to the proposed SSC. Also, I mention that the old colliders never crossed the billion dollar threshold, they technically go past 1 billion now if you adjust for inflation in 2021 US dollars, but just barely.

9. Reagan’s plan to eliminate the Department of Energy was not as simple as just eliminating it, as its functions would have to be absorbed by other departments. Pitches were put forward for the department of the interior and the department of commerce to take over responsibilities, even including control of the nuclear arsenal believe it or not. However the plan ran out of steam as eliminating the DoE required a review of the department’s performance to be submitted to congress, and ultimately it was found that the DoE was meeting its objectives. Additionally, with no more urgent energy crisis, and no clear plan for what to do with the nukes, it would have been a tough fight with congress, and Reagan had other policy battles to fight. And besides that, Reagan was mostly able to achieve his energy policy goals without eliminating the department, namely: deregulation, prioritizing the private sector, and eliminating renewables research in favour of fossil fuels and nuclear.

10. The end of the SDI program (Star Wars) is hard to pin down, mostly because it was never officially cancelled, just renamed, repurposed, and scaled back. I think most would agree though that 1993 was the last year that Reagan’s original vision for SDI died. This is similar to what happened with the Space Station Freedom project. Some figures place the total cost of SDI as low as $30 billion, some put it as high as $200 billion if you consider its spiritual successor programs as continuations. My $60 billion figure is based on the confirmed congressional budgetary appropriations since its announcement in 1983 and cancellation in 1993.

11. To consider the Reagan admin as “peacetime” you have to neglect the Iran Contra scandal, bombing Lybia, funding the Mujahideen, chemical weapons sales to Iraq, the invasion of Grenada, etc. etc.

12. The most expensive skyscraper, stadium and bridge from my research were, respectively: The One World Trade Center, SoFi Stadium, and the East Oakland Bay Bridge.

BobbyBroccoli
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"-tron" is just the socially acceptable version of "-inator".

CIoudStriker
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My favourite part of this story is how the two scientists didn't try and compete to name the particle, they decided both names would be made official

FaraFellow
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It's a minor point, but it really needs to be acknowledged how Admiral Watkins set aside his potential biases and used his position to help those suffering from the AIDS epidemic. He was an exemplary civil servant.

crashtestdolphin
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I got actual chills when the mountains being the military budget were revealed. This man is MAD talented!

pillowyhalo
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Absolutely wonderful. Your videos are fantastic and I know how much work must go into them. Annoyed I’ve exhausted your recent ones already!

MedlifeCrisis
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The quality of these is just staggering. Very happy you're finally blowin up.

JacobGeller
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I didn't get where you were going with the presentation style at first and thought it was just to try and be flashy/stylish. But keeping the whole timeframe (and budgets) together and having each new panel in context to everything else said before turned out to be a game changer for me! Especially when you went back to a previous time to add some detail, person or remark, I don't think it would have worked at all without that style. It made everything said much more connected while it made clear where big shifts in the story really occurred. I will greatly miss it when watching other videos.
Also, not having 1 in the title caught me off guard by the end, can't wait! :D

miniman
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I love how the military catholic Reagan appointed to the AIDS commission actually ended up being based and wanting to actually work on the AIDS crisis

codex
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Damn, Watkins really was the unexpected goat of the Reagan administration. Literally every sign imaginable pointed towards him being the perfect person to fail, yet he did everything one could reasonably expect in order to make it succeed. Almost no relevant knowledge or experience, and yet he nailed it.

annoynce
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i was not expecting this level of professionalism from an account named bobby broccoli. I am very much enjoying this content and i am going to binge as much of your content as possible, it is incredibly entertaining and informative and im having a great time!

conflictinmybrain
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I have very poor working memory and an attention deficit and very often I struggle to keep track of what someone's saying. Your visualizations, animations and summaries make these topics much easier to digest for me. Thanks.

hiho
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Bro you're the summoning salt of physics videos. I'm so incredibly here for it. Keep it up brother.

jameswilkinson
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"see those mountains back there? Well, they aren't actually mountains, they're the annual united states military budget"

Damn, what a segue.

MomotheToothless
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Do you do all of these by yourself? The sheer amount of research, fact checking, script writing, editing, more editing and somehow it all comes together into hours of cohesive, simplified yet not simplistic and extremely entertaining videos. Wow.

axelanderson
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As somebody with a decent bit of video editing experience I’m so insanely impressed with the ability to keep me hooked on a single graphic that slowly changes over time. Your visual style is so unique and I LOVE it.

JrDragonology
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"Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do."

There must be at least one word Reagan got wrong in that sentence, but I don't know which one.

jujuplayboy
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You are such a great storyteller; but somehow even greater at visually presenting the story you're telling. The mountain/budget reveal at 27:35 is just one example of it.

I already experienced it with the Schön piece, and seeing you're still going is awesome.

Truly remarkable work Bobby :O

celsomiralles
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Literally the only videos I watch that are over 50 minutes, also the dude who refused to let them lay people off is amazing and I'm glad he did that.

Vampyrjellyfish
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When I was a kid we’d always drive through the town of Waxahachie on our way to see family. My dad would tell me stories about the SSC since he grew up in DFW I’ve always found info on it as hard to find. Thank you for answering all my childhood curiosity with this incredible series

jackhoenig