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I am writing this post on behalf of my brothers and sisters in the physical sciences...Geology, Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy...you guys are getting screwed over, and I for one intend to shine a light on the travesty.
Research in the physical sciences is a casualty of the fecklessness of the 109th Congress. The Republican-controlled 109th Congress did not pass the budget, opting instead to fund the government on continuing resolutions. The current one will expire on February 15th and the current congress has pledged to pass another C.R. to fund the government through September 30th.
On the surface this doesn't sound so bad - it keeps funding at current levels. This is a de facto decrease in funding of about 4%, by not keeping up with inflation and expanded studies. It also serves to keep new projects from launching and existing projects from moving forward.
Personally, I am not hurt. In the life sciences we are doing just fine. We're getting writers cramp not from filling out grant proposals but from endorsing checks. (That's a joke. The department secretary shows us the checks before she takes them to the comptroller, and we all do a giddy little dance and then we order pizza.) We get to pick and choose the projects we work on and we don't sweat it because we know there is another research opportunity waiting for us as soon as the current one ends. Hell, the last three times I've moved on, I have had a choice of tenured professors and projects, and I chose who I wanted to work with.
My friends in the physical sciences should be as flush as we are, but they aren't, and it's a travesty. The physical sciences are what will save us, if we can indeed be saved. A team of physical scientists will be who solves the alternative energy conjecture. That is reason enough to fund them.
Anyone who isn't just totally and completely blown away by quantum mechanics doesn't know the first thing about it, or they would be stunned to reverence like all good scientists are. And that's a big part of the problem. We have leaders who aren't awed by quantum mechanics, and as long as that's the case, we will have issues.
The threatened programs include a $50 million plan to build a supercomputer that universities would use to push back frontiers in science and engineering; a $310 million observatory meant to study the ocean environment from the seabed to the surface; a $62 million contribution to a global program of polar research involving 10 other nations; and a $98 million ship to explore the Arctic, including the thinning of its sheath of floating sea ice.
Missions at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are also threatened, with $100 million in cuts. Paul Hertz, the chief scientist at NASA’s science mission directorate, said potential victims included programs to explore Mars, astrophysics and space weather.
Astronomy and space exploration are worthy of funding simply because nothing inspires us so. Everyone knows where they were when the moon landing took place, where we were and what we were wearing when the Challenger exploded, seeing that first picture of Io on the cover of Time Magazine...If you are of a certain age, SkyLab captured your imagination and gave it flight. It would be interesting (to me, at least) to see the compiled statistics on increased Asimov checkouts from public libraries as SkyLab became a reality. If you are my age, you grew up on books like The Effects of Gamma Radiation on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. We were raised to be the technological revolutionaries that would be our nations salvation. (So I gotta ask - what the hell happened??? Before there was a Department of Education, it seems we actually got one by going to school.) We were raised on science, and math was a given. We built and launched rockets, and those of us in the gifted program got to make our own black-powder from bat guano we collected from caves on the riverbank. Using the classroom as the sun, we set up a scale planetarium that covered blocks. The whole neighborhood was involved.
Astronomy and space exploration move us in a way unlike anything else. We simultaneously struggle for significance in an infinite and random universe while confirming our insignificance and defending our status as mostly harmless. Personally, I firmly believe that the picture above, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of a section of the Carina Nebula is worth every penny of funding that has ever been applied to Astronomy and space research. I for one find it reassuring to see evidence that I live in an irreverent universe.
Fortunately we have a new congress and there is a way to set the physical sciences funding travesty right. The Energy department has offered to move $500 million dollars to research allocations. This would fund the research through FY 2007, make up for funding shortfalls, and require no budget increase. Contact your congressperson today and encourage them to back the movement to allow Energy to give a hand to the physical sciences. The work being done is too important to be a political bargaining chip.
