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US Can't Meet The "Grand Challenges" of Physics
BlueSky writes "A new report paints a troubling picture of the state of physics research in the US, which the authors believe has dire consequences for the competitiveness of the US. 'The report identifies six key questions that will represent the grand challenges that materials science will face over the coming decade, the ones most likely to produce the next revolution. But it also raises fears that those challenges will be met by researchers outside of the US. It highlights the fact that government funding has not kept up with the rising costs of research at the same time that the corporate-funded research lab system has collapsed. As a result, US scientific productivity has stagnated at a time when funding and output are booming overseas.'"
The Bu$h regime and his anti-science fundie pals..
When you have so much Intelligent Design/Creationist proponents in positions of power it is natural that science education will suffer. There's always importing more Indians/Filipinos/Chinese nationals to do the heavy lifting.
It's like having Satanists run a local Baptist Church. No good will come of it.
This has, in truth, very little to do with science per se. The precise location where scientific research is conducted has little bearing on the science itself. There are important political, economic and strategic concerns, but the import of this article, as it always is, is more a matter of American exceptionalism and nationalism;
We see some rapidly growing economies in Asia... China and India are the biggest, but many of the smaller countries there have shown remarkable advances over the years. From a humanitarian point of view it's good to see the poverty reduce and the money available for research increase.
Globally the state of physics research is good; it's even growing in the USA, but just growing harder world-wide. This will mean that the world will be able to solve its most pressing problems bar one: the hunger for money of the US corporations. The US should be so wise to realize that they'll be the third or fourth biggest economy of the world in a couple of years and start specializing in a few markets, leaving bulk production to China and India.
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I think this article helps us understand the path that our nation has walked down and the consequences of its destination. I see a bleak future as the gap between the rich and poor expand and the rich elite become less likely to grow America and more interested in growing their assets internationally by whatever means to achieve their profits.
Ultimately we will face a day when another nation has far exceeding power in weaponry because of their advances over us in physics, chemistry or nanotech/engineering. Then they will be in position to enforce their will upon us like we do to other nations today.
Our nation has become the big dumb bully rich preppy that we all fought against in high school.
As long as there are enough other countries realizing the importance of scientific research, I do not see a problem.
It does not really matter who is doing it as long as it gets done.
Maybe some people cannot swell with national pride but who cares about that...
Huh? What do they mean? There is plenty of money in research, one just has to find a way to make it sound like 'research' will eventually kill more Iraqis, then 'research' will get plenty of money. Let's look at some examples:
1. Nanotech : By building tiny small robots we can kill Iraqis and they wouldn't even see us coming! == Cha-ching $1bn of funding over the next 10 years.
2. Particle Physics: By finding the Higgs boson we could kill Iraqis over great distances. The Higgs boson will create a micro singularity in Iraq and suck in all the Iraqis and leave us all the oil we want. When we burn it all, the Higgs boson will be equally effective against Iranians! == Cha-ching $2bn for a new particle accelerator.
Gosh!... didn't academia teach these physicists anything
You do realise that europeans have been living with those costs of car fuel for the last 15 years, right? Here in the UK, all it means is that poor people take the bus, and there are more buses to cater for all the poor people. And students.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
From now on, no nuclear research will be conducted, we will focus our attention on nucular research only. Anyone caught doing nuclear research will be considered a terrorist.
When Physics challenged me to a thumb wrestling deathmatch I ran away and hid under my desk before it could give me a wedgie.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Science stagnating at a time when IP rights are stronger than ever? How can that be? I thought lots of patents on everything would virtually guarantee a scientific advantage! You mean to tell me that all those patent lawyers have been LYING?
Money for nothing, pix for free
You do realise(sic) that Americans don't have a very good public transportation system at all and a lot of them live in small towns that do not have any kind of public transportation. For most Americans no car = no job.
Am I the only one who finds that Americans are more and more comparing themselves to the old Rome? Quite pompous, IMO. Together with the fact that they are spending more on weapons than the rest of the world combined, this starts to worry me.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
"You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels.
It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today!"
--Arthur Jensen, played by Ned Beatty, Network, 1976
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
I took physics III at the local university thinking of wanting to pursue medical physics. The class was great because of the professor, but condition of the department was terrible. The lab equipment is 20 years old, hasn't been maintained, and is in need of replacement. The department doesn't have money to purchase a peice of $300 dollar equipment!? The upkeep of the building was bad too. It smells like the bathrooms hasn't been cleaned properly. Something like that would never pass if it was the business department. Clearly something is wrong if physics can't even get money to meet basic needs like a clean bathroom...
The biggest threat to America is, without a doubt, our execrable education system. At University it is world class, but the levels below are basically third world.
As scary as this sounds, there are a lot of the same anti-intellect, anti-science people in the the global warming movement too -- and I'm not saying this to hurt the movement. I'm as pro-green as they come, but because of my understanding of science, not because someone said that the sky is falling. When I hear people say that global warming is a FACT that cannot and should not be challenged via the Scientific Method, I get pretty frightened. All challenges to any theory make it more accurate. Intelligent Design is not a theory because it cannot be challenged. Global Warming IS a theory, and a pretty good one, but it's SIGNIFICANTLY weakened by the morons who follow it blindly, and refuse to let others analyze it critically! There are a lot of fair minded, rational people with science backgrounds who believe that taking actions to reduce carbon emissions is a good thing for the planet, who don't want to throw out the scientific method. We're willing to work towards a better understanding of climate change through science, and in places where the current theory doesn't quite fit, we're very happy to say "yes -- the science here is inconclusive." It doesn't mean the whole theory is wrong. It doesn't mean that we should not reduce carbon emissions. It doesn't mean that our cause is not just. We're not afraid of people attacking the theory of global warming. Quite the opposite, when holes are found it means that MORE study should be done. I have a terrible feeling this is going to be misunderstood, but I'll throw one more paragraph on here. I completely support the idea of SIGNIFICANTLY reducing the use of fossil fuels. In my personal life I try to be as green as possible. I take public transportation everywhere, I've started/improved recycling programs everywhere I've worked. I truly believe that we can take action to improve the suitability of the earth for humanity. I just don't want the lies of "scientific consensus" and "the time for debate has passed" to put a chill on the GREATEST accomplishment of mankind -- the scientific method. The next time someone says "there's no time for debate" please think about the fact that you could debate AND be green at the same time.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
My biggest fear is that neither the US people, government, nor economy will be ready to be removed from the top position. We'll continue spending all our time and effort building walls to "keep the bad guys out" while forgetting that we need to "make some good guys within."
$6 a gallon? It's over $8/usg here, but the economy is growing at around 6% (admittedly, we're a small island which has become very desirable to live in).
The solution? On any nice day, I ride my bicycle the 25 mile round trip to work. On a nice week I can save the equivalent of about US$40 in driving costs.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
To me it is interesting that the challenges all seem to be cross-disciplinary.
s -selling-solar.html
* How do complex phenomena emerge from simple ingredients?
* How will the energy demands of future generations be met?
* What is the physics of life?
* What happens far from equilibrium and why?
* What new discoveries await us in the nanoworld?
* How will the information technology revolution be extended?
How can dicipline specific funding mechanisms address these issues effectively? I think, generally, unless funding agencies are willing to entertain joint proposals (say biology and solid state) these questions will be hard to address. How can you be sure that proposals don't get rejected just because they seem out of field?
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Electricity without rate increases: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Science research, as funded by the U.S. Gov't agencies, is always at a disadvantage because politics works on a shorter time space--the terms of the people who get elected. Science research always has a long look forward usually much beyond the scope of even a 6-year term. It takes years for results to appear that are useful for products and procedures that pay off in better ways of living for people. The funding for the Superconducting Super Collider that got cancelled was in my opinion the perfect example of a long-term science research project (expensive YES) that would have yielded decades of good science for U.S. scientists and those from other countries. I think the cancellation of that project was a huge mistake in terms of science in the U.S. Politicians want projects finished during their term of office so they have something to point to for their reelection campaign. Science research rarely fits those kind of time lines. As I see it, the ways we fund science at the federal level are fundamentally flawed because of this lack of appreciation of how long good science research actually takes. Funding needs to be continuing and stable. We also need to study our priorities and stop focusing on just the glamorous stuff. (Unglamorous science today may develop into glamourous science tomorrow.)
The USA has an army of laywers which will sue god for not adhering to intellectual property laws and to patent laws. :-)
So no worries, if somebody outside of the USA will make research progress god will be sued...
Ahem not only poor people, taking public transport is a very common usage of transportation over here.
The Physics world has moved into a wierd age. Phds. are now granted to people who produce equations and theories which can not be validated with experiments. Note: I did not say proved, I said validated.
One the other said of Physics world, applied physics, you have the patent wars slowing things to a crawl. In fields like fusion and nanotechnology innovation is being stalled by patents. If you aren't writing a patent, you are figuring out how to get around someone else's patent. The amount of time wasted on patents is sad. The patent system needs to change such that the obvious and trivial can no longer be patented. Just because an invention occurred in nanotechnology or biotechnology does not mean it should be granted a patent simply because it sounds really, really technical.
In our society, we now value feeding corporations and lawyers more that we value knowledge and innovation. Meanwhile other countries like China, who do not respect our Copyright and Patent process pirate our products and will soon leap ahead of the US in physics research because they aren't encumbered by the capitalistic IP game.
In Stockholm it's far more efficient in some cases to take the public transports (subway or busses), even ministers take the subway to work... There are a lot of gridlocks in Stockholm which don't face the buses who are on their own lane... There are a couple of "core" buss routes where a bus comes along every 2-4 minutes during peak hours and 5-6 of peak ours and 6-10 minutes during night. The result? Taking the bus is far faster and you can work, read, etc while doing it...
I've said this before, but the real numbers say that this article is wrong.
We outspend every other country by FAR on science and technology. This may be useful propaganda to get the US to reinvigorate public interest in science again, but private and governmental interest has never waned.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
-Tom
Don't forget the immigrants. It wasn't just money that got us where we are today.
The United States benefitted enormously from an influx of European physicists in the 1930s and 1940s, some of them escaping Hitler's Germany... Not to slight Harold Urey or E. O. Lawrence or Richard Feynman... but, call the roll of the people who gave us the scientific lead that led to our superpower status: Leo Szilard, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Isador Rabi, Stanislaw Ulam, E. P. Wigner, Hans Bethe... and don't forget the German scientists recruited just after the war, Werner von Braun. Immigrants, every one of them.
In today's anti-immigrant and xenophobic climate, we've actually been kicking out graduate students and postdocs with Middle Eastern origins and generally making their lives miserable with red tape and problems with student visas. With that sort of treatment, they'll probably end up pursuing careers somewhere other than the U. S.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
First person I heard do it was actually Eddie Izzard (not an American).
Considering what happened to Rome, I think it's less pompous and more doomsaying...
You're wrong. Just look here. Starting in the 1940s or 1950s, the US became the leader in physics research, even if present-day EU were (anachronistically) to be considered as a unit.
This is a consequence of several factors.
1) Sputnik.
Due to the USSR's dramatic achievements of the 1950s and 1960s, scientific research became a high priority for the US government and US society as a whole. Physics, chemistry, rocketry were funded by government and industry. To be interested in science as a kid did not necessarily mark you as an object of ridicule and a target of daily beatings.
2) Flight from Fascism.
Einstein, Fermi, Szilard, and many others left continental Europe to escape anti-Semitism. Some guys like Born became British subjects. Many more became citizens of the US, where they continued research and taught students who became the next generation of physicists.
3) Economy.
During the 1950s, it took some time for Western Europe to rebuild industry. (In Warsaw Pact countries, industrial capacity hardly rebuilt at all.) But in the US, industrial capacity had actually greatly increased during the war. So the US had a lot more money to invest in research.
Now, it could be argued that the advances in physics during 1900-1990 were more important than those made during 1950-2000. I think it would be wrong, but certainly an argument could be made. But it would be entirely beside the point. The question was whether or not the US was preeminent in physics research during 1950-1990. Clearly it was.
Faraday knew how to talk to these people. Asked by the Minister of the Exchequer why pure research should be funded, he responded, "Who knows, Sir, but that someday you may be able to tax it."
You're absolutely right about the SSC. I know a dozen physicists who lost not only that job but their research careers because of the closing of that project. One of them told me that the moment the funding was stopped, CERN put in a hiring freeze for several years so they wouldn't have to deal with the influx of applications. Perfectly good physicists ended up teaching at local community colleges. I was studying physics at the time, and it certainly ended my desire to pursue a physics career in the U.S.
I think a great litmus test for anybody to be taken seriously would simply be asking them how old the Earth is.
If they say it's 6000 years old, you can disregard anything that person says for the rest of their life.
Am I the only one who finds that Americans are more and more comparing themselves to the old Rome?
This comparison is nothing new for the American elite - why do you think their rulers are called Senators?
They also match Rome in decadence and orgies, but then again so I hear the German VW union leaders do too.
Tell your friends about xenu.net
yes, but the problem is not high prices of fuel per se -- it's the lack of infrastructure. the big car/tire companies bought and dismantled the public transit system of many major american cities years ago. consequently, many people rely on their cars to commute to work. in addition, everybody here STILL insists on driving the largest car possible. it's weird.
in st louis, the public transit system is essentially broken. i will say that i've noticed many more scooters on the street since gas hit $3/gal, however.
mr c
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - R. Feynman
There is no way that lawyer jobs are going to be offshore outsourced. And there is no way that there will ever be too many lawyers, because lawyers create the very problems that lawyers solve. If you are smart enough to be a physicist, you are certainly smart enough to be a lawyer.
Lawyers control everything: lawyers are judges, lawyers are politicians, lawyers are lobbyists, and of course, lawyers are lawyers. No way the social/political climate will ever turn against lawyers - not in the USA.
Lawyers are also among the highest paid professionals, second only to physicians - and that could change.
Get smart. Leave that technical baloney to foreigners. If you are not smart enough to be a lawyer, be a professional litigant. Msft is always looking for professional litigants.
I predict, that in the near future, everybody in the USA will earn their living by suing one another.
I really don't think the religious nuts are the cause of the decline in technology in this country.
/profit/. Not many folks want to invest in "blue sky research" anymore, and even if they did, it's probably cheaper to invest in that kind of research overseas.
I think commercialism is far more easily the culprit.
We have rapidly entered an area where people want to invest heavily (401K, etc.). But everyone is after
Investment in research in this country is probably declining because we have become so heavily profit-motivated and no one sees any profit in research.
Further, I think most of the "low-hanging-fruit" of scientific learning was done between 1945 and 1980. But now perhaps we are reaching the time of diminishing returns, where it requires much heavier investment in the research to produce (profitable) results.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Is this in and of itself really something to be afraid of? That scientific advances might happen without the U.S.'s participation does not seem so threatening to me. If anything that fact is just an obvious corollary to the fact that the U.S. has lost interest in mainstream science, and is currently spending much more heavily on all the military / "defense" related technologies and advancements they can.
There was a time, I've been told, when the US actually worked with other countries rather than simply trying to dominate and control them all. If we don't go back to that before our government loses too much power throwing fits internationally, and spreading terror and submission nationally through it's ironically named "war on terror", the US will continue to drift more and more toward being what it used to accuse the USSR of being.
We should be HAPPY if other countries do with scientific research, we should form joint projects - Working together is not just a good idea on a personal level. This whole national attitude that we have to do everything better, first, and completely alone - that is a kind of psychosis that should not be supported. It's pretty fucked up that even 1% of Americans are willing enablers for being abusive toward the rest of the world, let alone 29% or whatever it is today.
People with those kind of fears pushed us into war with Iraq, and the same group will push us into the blue light special war of the month for as long as we let them run our country. It's a _business_ for them, and it has nothing to do with (our) security.
On one occasion, I saw a very fit father, two young children, one infant, and two bags of groceries pedaling down the bicycle lane of the street. Seemed to be doing just fine, if a little sweaty.
Back here in the states, I find the sedan or minivan to be superior to the "Gas guzzling SUV" for transporting two or three kids and groceries. Though I have tried to get one of those bicycles over here, the shipping is completely prohibitive. I am intensely curious as to how practical the production Chevy Volt will be for a small family. I'm hoping it looks more like the Saturn Astra than the Saturn Sky, but at this point, who knows.
Ross
The problem isn't funding--it's what we do with it. Oh, sure, we could use lots more money, but it's not the real problem. Before I get into the details, let's briefly pick apart some of the nonsense in the National Academy of Science's Condensed-Matter and Materials Physics report, such as their supposed "grand challenges":
When you increase the size of your system, your state space generally grows exponentially. Of course it gets complex. Figuring out the specific complex behaviors of various systems isn't a single grand challenge, it's a whole lot of little challenges (unless you're talking about superconductivity, which I'll revisit).
Long-term? It's probably fusion, which isn't a condensed matter problem; try nuclear and plasma physics.
This is bio-physics, not condensed matter. Condensed matter is only one of many fields contributing to bio-physics.
This one seems legitimate, although it would be more interesting if they framed it in terms of some of the big problems in non-equilibrium physics.
This doesn't even make sense as a research challenge. It could at least have been framed as a question involving nanotechnology.
Here it seems like private industry is doing a very good job with the short-to-medium term. Long term, the answer may well be quantum information, which is my own field. Some of the approaches to building quantum computers are condensed matter-based, but many aren't.
The big thing I'm surprised not to see on the list is superconductivity. One estimate I heard was that something like 40% of all physicists have worked on it at some point in their careers (for me, it was as an undergrad, albeit peripherally). Despite the enormous research effort, we still don't have a really solid handle on how it works.
I'm really unimpressed by the "grand challenges" the NAS was able to come up with; it reeks of committee work. For comparison, I could write a much better list for my own field. Just off the top of my head:
Similarly, the NAS suggestions also seem to be the product of a shy and timid committee. There's the usual--more outreach, more women/minorities, more education, more money. There's also a pining for the old days of Bell labs and such, but no realistic consideration of how to bring it back (which would of course start with figuring out why it left), beyond a call for more discussions.
The countries that do the most to meet [the challenges] will benefit the most economically.
(Playing devil's advocate) Why is that so? Basic research is available to everyone. The country that benef
"We're failing because we're not spending enough".
I cannot count the amount of times I've seen this argument over and over again in political debates in America. It's the real downfall of America. In education, health care, scientific research, energy people just wave money around like some sort of cure-all when it isn't. What is really required is leadership and creativity and a lot of examining details in an even handed manner that the vast majority of people could care less about or would go over their heads. I think it's pretty reflective of the current trend of people not getting excited about any political issue unless it involves them getting some money from the government trough or money being taken away from them.
I'm amazed at the Slashdot community... Everytime a discussion of Wikipedia or performing research on the WWW comes up, they insist that people should be (and in fact are) capable of determining the validity of a source of information for themselves. We don' need no steenkin' experts...
Yet nobody so far seems to have noticed that this report was generated by an agency that feeds at the public trough and thus has a vested interest in creating the impression that they are being starved! Instead - to a man you've hared off on blaming the Usual Suspects, President Bush, the religious right, education, etc... etc...
Rather than asking why they aren't getting a bigger share of pork - why aren't you asking what they have done to adress the rising costs?
What am I saying? This isn't a peculiar set of circumstances; this is normalcy.