we dont need that junk we have this now its more important
Posted on 06/02/2008 8:25:55 PM PDT by Flavius
article physics is one of the most intriguing scientific fields, probing the nature of the very makeup of the universe itself. However, over the last half decade, due to the growing economic crisis and various items such as war funding taking precedence in government budgets, the budget to help the U.S. stay leaders in the field of particle physics has been slipping.
The U.S. currently is down to only one remaining particle physics lab, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, associated with the University of Chicago and the lab was looking to be on the way out. It had started in February rolling furlough program that slashed already scarce employee pay by 12.5 percent and forced them to take periodic unpaid leave.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailytech.com ...
we dont need that junk we have this now its more important
This should make the anti-science crowd here very happy.
I'm sure we'll all enjoy the coming Dark Age.
Oh, come on now. DOn’t be a Gloomy Gus....
IF the boffins had popped out a auto engine that got 300 MPG, they would be swimming in the dough.
BUT, since the ‘product’ they put out means nothing (less than nothing actually) to the ones paying for it, the funding gets cut.
Don’t feel bad, NASA is next....
Once this money runs out and this lab is gone the United States will be on the same level as Mexico, Guatamala, Honduras, Costa Rica and probably all of Africa when it comes to particle physics.
The US is well on it’s way to being a third world country.
Remember when the USA used to lead the world in physics research?
I will feel bad. And so should you.
If we put all of our budgets into welfare and other entitlements, with none into research, we'll be an agrarian economy in a generation. And probably cease to exist as an independent country in two.
Such as "entitlements". The military budget, even with the war funding, is still not all that high by post WW-II standards. Of course the NASA and other science budgets are in the crapper. Even "small limited government" Thomas Jefferson saw the need for "exploration", in his case that meant sending Lewis & Clark out on their mission of discover, today it means pushing the envelope in all the natural sciences, not just the ones that are seen as immediately useful.
Those should mostly be funded by the industries and individuals who stand to benefit. It's the "we don't know what it might good for stuff", like quantum mechanics that later led to masers and lasers (once called a solution looking for a problem), as well as all the solid state electronics goodies we enjoy or curse today, that should be funded by governments and philanthropists.
Wouldn’t mind hearing what these salaries were that were slashed.. Considering the librarians at the local African American Cultural Center pull down $125k of public dough.
philanthropist are in china opening plants there
to the benefit of their military not ours
This is infuriating because the federal government always manages to find money to fund bike paths or National Twine Museums but never has money for the important strategic things.
I guess now is not the time to pick up that physics PhD. I don’t see how private donors can keep physics research alive.
All of you winers, complaining that the government should do all these things seem so willing to spend other people’s money for the world’s public good.
What’s wrong with you and others, privately, sending money to fund such work? Someone did just that, and look at what will come out of it. Apparently something good, but at an individual’s expense.
Welfare whores!
What’s wrong with freeing private enterprise to go fund such work?
You’d think, from the way you all speak, that Ben Franklin couldn’t have invented great things for his time without a huge government grant.
Get real
I’m not aware of any anti-science people here. I am aware of those who follow Christ, but for the most part they are very pro-science, as they see it as the study of God’s creation.
Or was your comment just a cheap shot at those who trust in God and His Scriptures?
Thank God for the Christians, who brought us through the “Dark Age,” guarding the collected knowledge of humanity for a time when we’d appreciate it.
ping
Private business will not fund initiatives with payback measured in decades. This is basic research, not technology or product development.
You owe a good part of your current standard of living to the commercialization of basic research from decades ago.
I have no problem with the relatively minuscule portion of my taxes which funds such research, nor would I have a problem with it being doubled.
What I do have a problem with is the transfer payments that make up the vast majority of the federal budget. Cut that to just enough to support those few who legitimately cannot work, and nobody would care about investments in basic research and space exploration.
Funny use of the term philanthropist. Although an industrialist or capitalist may also be a philanthropist, as may someone who just has inherited wealth. Andrew Carnegie for example. The library I frequented as a kid was one of his, as were several other, virtually identical, libraries in my relatively small city.
In a very real sense, I owe Carnegie for at least a good part of what I am, for good or not.
You should be aware of the anti-science attitude here. It has already driven a lot of the scientists who used to post away.
Or was your comment just a cheap shot at those who trust in God and His Scriptures?
Post a solid science thread and see how long it takes for fundamentalists to gather to poke at science and scientists.
Thank God for the Christians, who brought us through the “Dark Age,” guarding the collected knowledge of humanity for a time when we’d appreciate it.
That is not necessarily the case. Here is an alternate opinion: The Myth of Christianity Founding Modern Science and Medicine.
Nothing, but they won't. They are too risk adverse. Funding science, and even the things that came before science, is a traditional function of government, and unlike many such, one that ultimately benefits everyone. Government needs to fund the leading edge stuff, where no private business will go. Once the basics are known, then private enterprise does a great job of applying those basics as needed and appropriate. The difference is one between basic and applied research.
In the 50s the military funded a lot of both, although not in general the most basic stuff, but rather stuff that might conceivably have some military application, with the emphasis on *might*, or which would serve to train the next generation of scientists, most of whom would work in the applied area rather than the basic research. And it paid off handsomely.
These days the government actively discourages applied research, by deeming the funds that would pay for it, "excess profits" or the result of monopoly power (you could take a look at Bell Labs, probably the finest corporate applied research organization the world has ever known, if it still existed as something other than the Alcatel/Lucent advanced developement organization It is today. . (And Not the rodent control folks either. :)) The old Bell Labs was killed by the United States Government.
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