Superconducting magnets pioneered at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Batavia played a key role in the federal government`s selection of a magnet design for a proposed colossal atom smasher, officials said.
The giant atom smasher, called the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), would be the largest machine ever built, forming a 60-mile-around undergound circular race track for elementary particles.
Fermilab`s expertise in building big atom smashers makes it one of the frontrunners for being selected as the site for the SSC. More than 20 states, including Texas, California, Arizona, New York and Florida, are vying for the scientific plum.
Although the final decison to build the atom smasher hasn`t been made, the selection of the magnet design is a milestone in the overall design of the SSC, said Maury Tigner, director of the U.S. Energy Department`s SSC Central Design Group.
The nation`s physics community is pushing for the construction of the SSC, and the Energy Department favors it.
If the $4 billion SSC is approved, plans call for construction to begin by 1988, with completion set for 1995.
Because the magnets constitute the major part of the machine, settling on the design of that component overcomes a hurdle that had been holding back the overall design of the atom smasher, Tigner said.
The huge machine would be 15 times larger than Fermilab`s Tevatron, the world`s most powerful atom smasher, and it would be about four times bigger than an atom smasher being built near Geneva, Switzerland, by a constortium of European countries.
``We need the SSC to keep this country viable,`` Fermilab director Leon Lederman said. ``It is the crucial element in trying to understand the outstanding problems of the ultra-small and the problems of the ultra-big
--particles and cosmology.``
The magnets keep beams of protons racing around the circular track at nearly the speed of light.
The proton beams travel in opposite directions on two magnetic race tracks and are forced to collide, creating energies never before attained on earth.
The process will allow physicists to explore the fundamental building blocks of nature and the forces that hold the universe together.