US Abandons Hunt For Signal of Cosmic Inflation (science.org) 56
The U.S. government has canceled a proposed $900 million project to study in unprecedented detail the afterglow of the Big Bang, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Science magazine: Known as CMB-S4, the project envisioned new arrays of ultrasensitive microwave telescopes at the South Pole and in Chile's Atacama Desert. Their goal: to detect patterns in the ancient light that would prove the newborn universe expanded in an exponential growth spurt called cosmic inflation.
The project, which could have delivered smoking gun evidence for a key theory in cosmology, was supposed to be a joint venture between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy (DOE). However, yesterday, the agencies sent an unsigned statement to the leaders of the collaboration saying the project is off. "DOE and NSF have jointly decided that they can no longer support the CMB-S4 Project," it reads.
The project, which could have delivered smoking gun evidence for a key theory in cosmology, was supposed to be a joint venture between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy (DOE). However, yesterday, the agencies sent an unsigned statement to the leaders of the collaboration saying the project is off. "DOE and NSF have jointly decided that they can no longer support the CMB-S4 Project," it reads.
Existing instruments give us a data firehose (Score:3, Informative)
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We will not tolerate our political outrage being tempered by your facts. Get in line or get the fuck out.
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We will not tolerate our political outrage being tempered by your facts. Get in line or get the fuck out.
Gentleman, please! There's room on the internet for both tempered facts AND political outrage! /deadpan
A little tempered political outrage would be nice.
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It's not as if the CMB is going to evaporate or something.
It is going to evaporate, slowly....
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It's not as if the CMB is going to evaporate or something.
No it isn't but there are countries other than the US doing research and they are not going to wait around for you to get your act together. Those funding such research will attract the brightest minds from around the globe and it will be there that the discoveries are made, including the spin-off breakthroughs that come from pushing technology to its limit in the name of research.
Once the US drops the ball and gets behind on the science and technology curve it is going to find it extremely hard to take
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Now, please name these other countries that are going to fund all these wonderful things.
Surprise! (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's science, this government is against it.
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If it's science, this government is against it.
In this case, looking for a "afterglow" sounds kinda woke -- can't have that. :-)
Inflation (Score:2)
In this case, looking for a "afterglow" sounds kinda woke
Actually, I suspect the reason may be that they heard the project was looking for evidence of inflation and with all the tariffs they'd rather nobody started looking for that.
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What is the current total Federal budget for science across all departments?
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What is the current total Federal budget for science across all departments?
About Tree Fiddy [youtube.com]. :-)
Re:Surprise! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Surprise! (Score:2)
A lot of pork can be buried in a billion dollar budget. Maybe that money isn't going to lead to the end of the rainbow. It's still a long long way to the end of that rainbow. There might be cheaper ways to get there.
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Re: Surprise! (Score:1)
I guess that explains how we got a mandated one size fits all COVID vaccine policy.
Because MAGA hates facts (Score:2, Insightful)
Heading back to the middle ages (Score:1, Insightful)
If you are going to cut $900M in science ... (Score:1)
... funding, this ranks relatively low on the "harm to the human race if we don't do this research now" scale.
Yeah, this hurts and I wish it wasn't happening, but many of our other science cutbacks hurt a lot more per dollar "saved."
As others have already pointed out, the data isn't going to disappear on us any time soon.
Re:If you are going to cut $900M in science ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that they're planning to spend almost half a billion dollars [slashdot.org] to take a retired space shuttle away from the Smithsonian and move it to Texas, one can perhaps question their motives. If the goal were actually to save money, that would be one thing. If it were to be used for something valuable like healthcare for the poor (oops, just cut a trillion dollars [slashdot.org] from that), you could make a good argument. But the goal clearly is to take money away from people they don't like and give it to their supporters.
Science can be done outside the US. (Score:5, Insightful)
The sooner the culturally inevitable decline of the US is accepted the better rest-of-world can succeed it. Needing the US for anything is a long hangover from WWII destroying real and potential competition.
The world should be doing its own research to keep the fruits thereof from Wall Street's grubby tentacles. I grew up through the space race but now see no reason the US deserves to hog research it can only use to benefit our owning kleptarchs.
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Needing the US for anything is a long hangover from WWII destroying real and potential competition.
The US had little to no competition long before WW2. Europe's relevance was over the second the US decided to step out from its isolationist curtain.
The sooner the culturally inevitable decline of the US is accepted the better rest-of-world can succeed it.
Ethnocentric trash steeped in dripping denial and insecurity.
Science a Global Endeavour (Score:2)
The US had little to no competition long before WW2.
Hardly. The US was definitely gaining rapidly before WW2 but Europe, and particularly the British Empire, was still very much the world's superpower. WW2 ended the empire and caused massive damage throughout Europe allowing the US to take the lead.
Regardless of that though science is a global endeavour and the knowledge gained benefits all of humanity. None of us will be better off if the US science program is diminished because it will mean less science is being done.
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Hardly. The US was definitely gaining rapidly before WW2 but Europe, and particularly the British Empire, was still very much the world's superpower.
Militarily yes, because the US was not interested in having a global military presence.
As I said, as soon as it withdrew from its isolationist curtain, there was no longer any contest.
The US surpassed the British Empire economically in the late 1800s.
Militarily? The second it decided it wanted to.
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Militarily? The second it decided it wanted to.
Umm, I think the Japanese had some say in that decision.
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The sooner the culturally inevitable decline of the US is accepted the better rest-of-world can succeed it.
It is interesting to wonder what the world would now be like if the American Revolution had never happened, and America were part of the British Empire, headed by a ruling family who claims that "god" says they have that right.
No invention of a written Constitution.
No trial of the idea of "government of the people, by the people, for the people".
No concept of "limited government",
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Uh...sure man.
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Ah yes. One of those. If something isn't perfect, it can't be of value and a tremendous improvement over not having that something.
Ah well.
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San Marino would still exist as the worlds oldest republic with a written constitution dating back to 1600 (an update to the constitution of about 1300) giving people "government of the people, by the people, for the people" and actual limited government. Though to be honest, it was 1974 before something like a bill of rights was added.
For rights, there's the Magna Carta from 1215 and the English Bill of Rights of 1689, which turned the British King into a figurehead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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CERN has spent untold billions on wild goose chases. The US is wise to let its European brethren look for the geese.
Luxury Spending (Score:2)
We have record homelessness, addiction, child trafficking, and a curiosity about the earliest moments after the Big Bang, if that even exists.
Oh and not enough electricity for humans and AI aspirations.
Given limited funding we need to prioritize.
Cutting the War Department funding in half would be another good move.
By all means if this can be philanthropically endowed, like the Simons Observatory, that would be fantastic.
And where are the Oil Sultan countries on this? Muslims used to be the very best Astron
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No you don't understand. Tariffs. Such a beautiful word, more beautiful than love. Soon we'll be so rich we won't know what to do with it.
Though in the meantime let's golden leaf the shit out of the white house, let's make it the gold house, you don't want Trump to live in some poor house, do you ? And military parades for our dear leader's birthday, cost be damned, warplanes flyovers for his Big totally Beautiful and not at all stupid Bill that expand his powers and destroy America.
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Even without billionaires wanting that money (Score:2, Insightful)
And yeah literally every single aspect of science contradicts the young Earth nonsense. But the thing about the religious lunatics is they have a lot of money and a lot of time. So they are happy to attack basically all of science.
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Sure, the $37 trillion in debt has nothing to do with it...
Glad we can agree on something (Score:2)
But you already knew all that right? Because you wouldn't admit to all of slashdot that you have little or no understanding of how the US economic system works would you? You certainly wouldn't admit that you don't understand the difference between a natio
It's okay, China will pick up the ball (Score:4, Insightful)
China always aspired to be the world's undisputed leader in science and technology, and Trump is giving them what they want.
DEI (Score:5, Funny)
Someone was told it was research into the universe getting woke the first time... :). :)
Of course it's cancelled... (Score:5, Insightful)
There was no PROFIT in it! (Score:1)
We have long since left behind the idea that we do science because it is good to do science. There are only two reasons we do science. Short term profit, or to find better and more efficient ways to kill people. That's the only science government (and most companies) will fund. Discovering the secrets of the CMB in no way furthers the two goals above, so it was cancelled. Apollo was a development program for an ICBM. If you can get a man on the moon, you can drop a bomb down the Kremlin's chimney. The Hubbl