 Please be seated. Mr. President and distinguished guests, and Mr. President, these are distinguished guests getting four American Nobel Prize winners on the stage at one time, I think it's quite an accomplishment. Dr. Cronin, Dr. Weinberg, Dr. Ting, and Dr. Richter, ladies and gentlemen, a year ago the President made the decision to move ahead with the construction in the United States of the world's largest and most powerful high-energy accelerator, the Super Collider. The President weighed the budgetary, the economic, and the scientific arguments and decided for America's future. Our scientific future, our future technology, our future competitiveness as a nation, and yes, our educational future as demonstrated by these outstanding honor students in science from across the country who are with us here today and on this stage. Now this outcome came as no surprise to those of us who have had the great honor of serving Ronald Reagan, an historic President. The President's basic instinct on any issue has always been to look ahead and to resist the temptations to do what is expedient today to create a vision of tomorrow for the United States and for the world. Today in the face of ever-increasing, tougher global competition, the importance of the Super Collider is all the more critical to our nation's future. The accomplishments of the Nobel laureates on this stage and the promise of these high school and college honors science students who are with us this morning says much about where this nation is today and where we can go if we continue to chart the right course. This group of explorers epitomizes the great importance of a continuing commitment to the quality education of each generation of Americans and investment in the necessary scientific tools to explore the new frontiers. Without the benefit of successive commitments by the United States to larger and more powerful particle accelerators, the United States would not enjoy the world preeminence in high-energy physics and other sciences that are represented by these Nobel laureates with us today. The Super Collider will show that this nation intends to be at the forefront of change into the next century and a world pioneer for new discoveries in basic physics. With your help, all of you here today and others, I believe that we can make the Super Collider a reality and that we Americans can continue to invest in our country for generations to come. It is my pleasure to introduce Dr. Steven Weinberg to make a presentation to the President. Mr. President, last year you decided to proceed with the construction of the Superconducting Super Collider. This decision was a major milestone in the support of basic scientific research by your administration and we wish to congratulate you on the wisdom of this decision. The SSC would be the latest in a sequence of particle accelerators. The first, the cyclotron was built by Ernest Lawrence in 1930 in Berkeley. The SSC is the next step needed to make progress in this field. It represents America's commitment to the pursuit of excellence in basic scientific research. It's also a commitment to our nation's next generation of young scientists. Today you have before you in the audience a group of some of the brightest members of this next generation. I hope they don't all go into high-energy physics because we need some of them to do other useful things, perhaps in the 21st century being president of the United States. They'll need the SSC, those of them who go into physics, to make progress at the scientific and technological frontiers that they'll have to explore. If we don't build it here in this country, then they're all going to have to get on planes and go off to Switzerland or Japan or the Soviet Union to do their experiments. We believe that it's imperative to proceed with this construction and operation of the SSC so that it'll be ready for them when they need it. We pledge that we'll do what we can to accomplish this important goal. Thank you again for your support of basic scientific research and for your historic decision to approve the SSC. It's a vital link to the future. Now I am to present you with a letter signed by six of us physicists. Two of them could not be here today and I'm glad to say that one of them, Professor Glashow isn't here because he's addressing a class of high school students. Thank you, Dr. Weinberg, and thank you all very much. And welcome to the White House. It's a great, great pleasure to have so many present and future scientific pioneers in the Rose Garden with us today. Along with members of Congress and the administration, we have no fewer than four Nobel laureates in the audience, as well as many of the top science students from the Department of Energy Science Honors Program. I'm tempted to paraphrase an earlier president who once said, there's never before been so much talent assembled in one place in the White House since, well, since I hosted the Washington Redskins and the South Lawn last month. But the reason we're here, of course, is to talk about the superconducting supercolliders you've probably guessed already. I have to confess that when I first heard about this place where things go round and round at great speeds and then crash into each other, I thought they were talking about a presidential campaign. At first, I was a little nervous addressing so many distinguished scientists on a subject of such complexity. But then I realized these are people who spend their days talking about things called quarks, which some claim exist in two places at the same time. And I thought, why worry? The fact is, I envy the students here today because they exist in a world that seems to put no limits on the imagination. Outer space used to be called the final frontier, but today we've begun to tap another frontier, inner space, whose infinitesimal constellations hold out infinite possibilities. It may be a cliche, but it's nevertheless true that the pace of progress is constantly accelerating. I think one of the reasons I've always had so little patience with those who talk about the limits to growth is that in my lifetime, I've seen those limits shattered again and again by questing minds. When I was very young, horsepower was still the kind you fed with hay. Powered flight was still a relatively new thing. And before the turn of the century, we plan to have men living and working in stations in space and a new hypersonic plane that can fly from here to Tokyo in less than three hours. I know that some people may question the practical applications of the superconducting supercollider. The strange world of subatomic particles they may think will never be more than an arcane interest to a few highly specialized scientists. But the truth is, the practical applications of this knowledge are already changing the way we live. One of my favorite examples is from the computer industry. One scientist describes the progress in that industry by making this comparison. If automotive technology had progressed as fast and as far as superconductor technology has in the last 20 years, he says that Rolls Royce today would cost less than $3, get 3 million miles to the gallon, and six of them would fit on the head of a pin. Well, the technological revolution he's describing is transforming our world. And it was only made possible by the knowledge scientists have brought back from their explorations of inner space. Every time someone turns on his desk computer, makes a phone call or plays a video game, he's plugging into that mysterious world of quantum physics. The superconducting supercollider is the doorway to that new world of quantum change, of quantum progress for science and for our economy. In the face of ever increasing global competition, the United States must maintain the leading edge in science and technology. And building the world's largest particle accelerator is a visible symbol of our nation's determination to stay out front. Benjamin Franklin once said that an investment in knowledge pays the best interest. I want to commend you all on your cause, your vision, and the message of progress and competitiveness you carry with you today. And it's my hope that Congress will show equal vision by approving funding to initiate construction of the supercollider. I think all they'd need to do is meet with some of these students here today to see that it is our responsibility to the next generation to keep America a place where we can dream big dreams and then make them real. I have to interject something here before I conclude. In my lifetime and not, and only the recent part of my lifetime, after about 25 years in movies and so forth, I was representing the General Electric Theater on television. And I visited one of their plants in Schenectady early on, and they proudly took me in and showed me what turns out to be the first computer. They called it an electric brain. It would have fit in the rose garden here, but it was about as long as from the edge of the platform to the bushes over there and almost as thick. And that is what I just thought of that when I mentioned here someone sitting down to his desk computer. That in just those years from there up to here is what has happened. So maybe that fellow about the Rolls Royce was right, six of them on the head of a pin. Well, I just want to thank you all very much for being here and for allowing me to participate. And God bless all of you. See the before you are the best and brightest in the scientific community of America schools, some high school, some colleges. In the summer, many of them work on the craig computers and the national laboratories. The scientists in the laboratories have nicknamed them super kids. Although I suspect most of them would probably like to be referred otherwise. They've selected two today, Greg Griffin from Louisiana, and today young from Washington DC to make a presentation to you of a super glider t-shirt from the super kids. Please step forward. Thank you very much. I'm very pleased and proud to have you here today. Thank you. I can go in and try it on now.