Barrett says physicists can only hope to getpartial results without the supercollider.

To many, the supercollider may seem like aphysics toy that the country can ill afford. Butphysicists are quick to justify its importance.

"Basically, particle physics has reached aplateau in our knowledge," says Feldman. "We thinkwe understand almost everything, but not quite.But things we don't understand usually lead towhole new levels of complexity and understanding."

Feldman says the physics community hasn'tlearned anything "strikingly new" about particlessince 1980.

The SSC, he says, was, specifically designed toreach an energy level high enough to either provetheir theories for sure, or give them newones--the so-called "no lose" theorem. Thiscertainty was not assured using lesser energycolliders.

Cancellation Shatters U.S. Reputation

Physicists say the cancellation of thesupercollider has negative repercussions extendingbeyond Harvard's walls. It is not only a "greatloss to scientists but also injures America'sreputation in science, both domestically andinternationally, Feldman says.

"I think that the U.S. reputation as a reliableinternational partner in science projects is sobad that there is great skepticism outside of ourcountry that we can be trusted to live up tocommitments in future projects," says BurtonRichter, president of the American PhysicalSociety and director of the Stanford LinearAccelerator Center.

"I think it's been potentially a catastrophe.The United States has been and was in a positionto continue to be a world leader in high energyphysics," says W. Anthony Mann, professor ofphysics at Tufts University. "And now we've justcompletely dropped the ball."

Most Harvard physicists working on the SSC weredesigning an instrument to detect muons--subatomicparticles liberated from collisions betweenprotons.

Brandenburg says the muon detector was but onecomponent of an all-purpose detector which about100 institutions were helping to construct.

Mann says a single university group wasill-equipped to design a detector alone. HarvardTufts and Brandeis Universities therefore sharedresources and formed the Boston Muon Consortium.Collaborators from the three universities had beenmeeting weekly at Harvard for the past three tofour years.

The consortium helped design the detector andconstructed an assembly line at Tufts to producedetector elements, says Mann, who worked full-timeon SSC research.

"We were within two-and-a-half weeks of a massproduction run when they stopped the project," hesays.

Mann says he plans to operate the assembly lineat a modest level despite the cancellation."Basically, we're going to follow through withproving out the design and assembly."