As a new video from Atlas Obscura tells us, the Higgs-Boson particle could have been discovered 10 years before CERN's Large Hadron Collider proved its existence in 2012—and it could have been done in Texas.Back in 1987, then-president Ronald Reagan approved plans to build the massive Superconducting Super Collider in the Texas desert. If it was completed, it would have been 51 miles in circumference—three times bigger than CERN's Large Hadron Collider which lies under France and Switzerland. It would also have the ability to collide particles at three times the strength.Reagan was excited about the Super Collider (nicknamed "Desertron"), telling the Department of Energy to "throw deep," meaning for them to do whatever it took to complete the project and be first to discover the Higgs-Boson. But during the Clinton administration, senator Jim Slattery took on the Super Collider, making its defunding his pet project and decrying it as "luxury science." Plus, Congress also had to fund the International Space Station, placing the two projects in competition with one another.Well, you know which one lost. The Desertron was abandoned for good in 1993, after $2 billion had been spent and 14 miles of tunnels had been dug. Clinton himself had wanted to continue construction, writing that discontinuation "would signal that the United States is compromising its leadership in basic science," but ended up signing off on the bill that yanked the Desertron's funds.But the results of its construction remain, the tombstone of a failed enterprise that anguished U.S. scientists.