I'll give you the URLs for these articles from New Scientist, but you'll either have to buy the paper copy (like I do), subscribe, or have to wait a week for them to go into the archive to read more than the teaser paragraphs. Sorry; can't control that.
But here it is:
Notice here that science funding has been slashed for the past four years--meaning twice with a Republican-controlled Congress and twice since Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi took charge (she was probably too busy changing the light bulbs to flourescents).
Maybe I can hear a hearty "so what" out there....
Who cares if the US (and the UK, which also drastically cut its research expenditures in this year's budget) doesn't actually trap a neutrino or create a positron.
How many of you--Hube, put your damn hand down--know what a neutrino, a positron, or a Higgs boson are anyway?
If so, feel momentarily ashamed, but contemplate some of the real-life consequences:
These cuts threaten to eliminate the jobs of some 300 highly trained scientists in the US alone.
There are several ways to parse this, despite the rather sensationalist headline I used to draw you in.
First, it can't be classed as a liberal-conservative thing, since it obviously took both sides to cut science funding--I'll emphasize it again--for the fourth year in a row.
Just chalk it up to another victory for the Demopublican monopoly.
[Wonder if anybody will bother to ask any of the presidential candidates in either Demopub wing what they think about it?]
Second, the connection to the Iraq war is, I think, rather tenuous and too PC for my tastes. Nothing in the spending patterns of Congress for the past four years suggests that they have ever felt the need to economize on much of anything as a result of the Iraq war.
And if they did, individual Congressional earmarks or ethanol subsidies would have been a far better place to start.
No, I think the reality is consistent with two comments in New Scientist:
First:
And then:
Now here's a place where Bill Gates or Oprah could step up to the plate: the American contribution to the ILC this year could be covered by a mere $60 million, the ITER by $160 million....
I'm sure they'd name it after you.
But here it is:
In an omnibus funding bill passed in late December, Congress added $70 billion in extra money for the [Iraq] war. To pare down the rest by $22 billion, requested increases for three major physical science agencies--the Department of Energy's Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology--were taken away.. With this proposed level of funding, the American Association for the Advancement of Science has reported that federal investment in basic and applied research will grow by just 1 per cent in the 2008 financial year, far less than inflation, making it the fourth year in a row in which federal research investment has declined in real terms.
The effect on high-energy physics and fusion research will be nothing short of devastating....
Notice here that science funding has been slashed for the past four years--meaning twice with a Republican-controlled Congress and twice since Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi took charge (she was probably too busy changing the light bulbs to flourescents).
Maybe I can hear a hearty "so what" out there....
Who cares if the US (and the UK, which also drastically cut its research expenditures in this year's budget) doesn't actually trap a neutrino or create a positron.
How many of you--Hube, put your damn hand down--know what a neutrino, a positron, or a Higgs boson are anyway?
If so, feel momentarily ashamed, but contemplate some of the real-life consequences:
Kaname Ikeda spent the holiday break thinking about how to cope with the US decision to cut its expected $160 million contribution from ITER, the $10 billion fusion reactor project that he heads. The pay-off from ITER could be immense. If the reactor succeeds in harnessing the energy created by fusing isotopes of hydrogen, it could pave the way for commercial fusion power plants that emit no greenhouse gases and run on cheap and abundant fuel. A site for the reactor is currently being leveled at Cadarche, France. The impact of the cuts is not yet known, but the planned 2016 completion date may have to be pushed back, since the US contribution amounted to 10 per cent of the total budget.
These cuts threaten to eliminate the jobs of some 300 highly trained scientists in the US alone.
There are several ways to parse this, despite the rather sensationalist headline I used to draw you in.
First, it can't be classed as a liberal-conservative thing, since it obviously took both sides to cut science funding--I'll emphasize it again--for the fourth year in a row.
Just chalk it up to another victory for the Demopublican monopoly.
[Wonder if anybody will bother to ask any of the presidential candidates in either Demopub wing what they think about it?]
Second, the connection to the Iraq war is, I think, rather tenuous and too PC for my tastes. Nothing in the spending patterns of Congress for the past four years suggests that they have ever felt the need to economize on much of anything as a result of the Iraq war.
And if they did, individual Congressional earmarks or ethanol subsidies would have been a far better place to start.
No, I think the reality is consistent with two comments in New Scientist:
First:
The ILC [International Linear Collider] and ITER were relatively easy targets for politicians since they are both under development and being built abroad.
And then:
Astronomy and particle physics probe some of the most profound issues in science, ... but if they had to be justified on purely economic grounds, they could disappear altogether.
Now here's a place where Bill Gates or Oprah could step up to the plate: the American contribution to the ILC this year could be covered by a mere $60 million, the ITER by $160 million....
I'm sure they'd name it after you.
Comments
Check out:
ITER is Big.
The real game in town which has a chance for success is:
WB-7 First Plasma
I do believe Congress is set to step up to the plate on that one if current experiments are successful.
Here are a few links to get you up to speed on the technology:
Bussard Fusion Reactor
This one is especially good on implications plus you can watch a video of Bussard's Google talk:
Easy Low Cost No Radiation Fusion
If you want to get deeper into the technology visit:
IEC Fusion Technology blog
Start with the sidebar which has links to tutorials and other stuff.
Aw man, no fair!! ;-)