Ceding leadership in science
Our Political Black Hole
By GAIL COLLINS, NYT
Scientists in Geneva announced this week that they had found a new subatomic particle that they were 99.999999 percent sure was the elusive Higgs boson, nicknamed the “God particle.” Even though we had no earthly idea what that meant, we were definitely excited.
It’s given us so much to think about: how existence began, the structure of the universe, the difference between bosons and fermions. And, of course, what it will mean to the presidential race.
The first thing all patriotic Americans are going to want to know is why something this important happened elsewhere. The Large Hadron Collider, where the physicists did the work, was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research. We were building a Superconducting Super Collider of our own, in Waxahachie, Tex., but Congress stopped the financing for it in 1993.
“It’s disheartening that a large number of fairly intelligent people could do such a thing,” said Leon Lederman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, when the budget-cutting House of Representatives ended the program. This was, of course, a long time ago, back when Americans still undertook expensive, daring construction projects and believed the House of Representatives had a large number of fairly intelligent people.
(More here.)
By GAIL COLLINS, NYT
Scientists in Geneva announced this week that they had found a new subatomic particle that they were 99.999999 percent sure was the elusive Higgs boson, nicknamed the “God particle.” Even though we had no earthly idea what that meant, we were definitely excited.
It’s given us so much to think about: how existence began, the structure of the universe, the difference between bosons and fermions. And, of course, what it will mean to the presidential race.
The first thing all patriotic Americans are going to want to know is why something this important happened elsewhere. The Large Hadron Collider, where the physicists did the work, was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research. We were building a Superconducting Super Collider of our own, in Waxahachie, Tex., but Congress stopped the financing for it in 1993.
“It’s disheartening that a large number of fairly intelligent people could do such a thing,” said Leon Lederman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, when the budget-cutting House of Representatives ended the program. This was, of course, a long time ago, back when Americans still undertook expensive, daring construction projects and believed the House of Representatives had a large number of fairly intelligent people.
(More here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home