Gordon MacDonald wrote a few years ago, "the federal government decided to sponsor the building of an atomic particle accelerator in Texas. Planners said the enormous and astronomically expensive atom smasher would dwarf any other in the world. It would take us several steps closer, they said, to discovering the secrets of the universe, a claim we frequently hear from the scientific community as it requests its billions of dollars for research.

"The particle accelerator was to be built underground, and so with the blessing of government money, construction began on a circular tunnel, which, if it had been completed, would have been several miles in circumference.

"But congress recently had second thoughts about the cost of the particle accelerator and construction came to a halt. What is…