I Wish We Didn't Have to Agree...
One final comment [about 4 July's Higgs-like boson announcement]. It did not escape my attention that the mostly European LHC team made this announcement on July 4th. If the U.S. Congress had continued funding the Superconducting Supercollider in the 1990s, yesterday’s discovery would have been made a decade ago, and most of the glory would have gone to American scientists. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to see the science get done. But Congress dropped the ball on a cutting-edge scientific project that barely made a dent in the federal budget, and for a long time to come we can expect the most important discoveries in physics to be made in other countries. University of Michigan physicist Gordon Kane also reminded me that if the U.S. Department of Energy had given Fermilab more funding, the Higgs discovery could have been made several years ago right here in the good ol’ USA."
-Robert Naeye
Editor-in-Chief
Sky & Telescope magazine
It's always nice when the Editor-in-Chief of Sky & Telescope magazine, colleague Robert Naeye, agrees with me. Of course, Bob being an editor said it a bit more diplomatically than I did.
The fact of the matter is that the United States is on a similar downward slide as the one experienced by the Roman Empire, and for the same reasons - we're prioritizing the wrong things. We care more about American Idol and Justin Beiber and (some of us) making the next million dollars than issues like yesterday. The result is that this nation has given up its leadership in sciences and education in general and, as we can see in this particular case, physics in particular. Instead we've become the leader in laughing stocks by spending time actually, seriously discussing creationism and "intelligent design" fiction and nonsense. And so the intelligent American physicists have been forced to work in Europe and aid the Swiss and French economies, not the economy of the United States. How intelligent was that Congress?
History has also taught us that a downward slide, once started, is EXTREMELY difficult to reverse. I feel like Churchill when he said that he wouldn't preside over the breakup of the British Empire. I don't want to preside over the slide of my nation, either. Unfortunately, it looks like neither one of us were given much of a choice. :-(
-Robert Naeye
Editor-in-Chief
Sky & Telescope magazine
It's always nice when the Editor-in-Chief of Sky & Telescope magazine, colleague Robert Naeye, agrees with me. Of course, Bob being an editor said it a bit more diplomatically than I did.
The fact of the matter is that the United States is on a similar downward slide as the one experienced by the Roman Empire, and for the same reasons - we're prioritizing the wrong things. We care more about American Idol and Justin Beiber and (some of us) making the next million dollars than issues like yesterday. The result is that this nation has given up its leadership in sciences and education in general and, as we can see in this particular case, physics in particular. Instead we've become the leader in laughing stocks by spending time actually, seriously discussing creationism and "intelligent design" fiction and nonsense. And so the intelligent American physicists have been forced to work in Europe and aid the Swiss and French economies, not the economy of the United States. How intelligent was that Congress?
History has also taught us that a downward slide, once started, is EXTREMELY difficult to reverse. I feel like Churchill when he said that he wouldn't preside over the breakup of the British Empire. I don't want to preside over the slide of my nation, either. Unfortunately, it looks like neither one of us were given much of a choice. :-(