"in terms of sheer excitement and anticipation, the superconducting super collider beats out everything on this list. in essence, the project was a tunnel inside which scientists would rev up beams of subatomic particles to breakneck speed and crash them into each other. foreseen as a way to simulate the conditions of the big bang and thereby “allow scientists to gain new insights into the very nature of matter”, the ambitious project was unable to get out of its own way, skyrocketing in allotted budget from $5 billion to over $12 billion on the basis of little more than speculation on what other uses (cancer and hiv cures among them) it might serve once it was actually built. after stalled progress, however, 1993's blitz of budget cuts pulled the plug on the tunnel before it was even one t"
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