Life as a Physicist

My Dad’s latest issue of Scientific American (Feb) just arrived. The cover carries the title: Special Report: The Future of Physics, with the short underneath it:

Hidden natural laws? Unseen dimensions? Two new particle colliders will search for answers at unimaginable energies

“Two!?” was my first thought. The first is, indeed, the LHC. The second is the ILC — the one for which all the funding was just cut. Ops. Reading the editorial I see no mention of the funding cuts, so I assume this went to press before that was known. Still, to be excited about something that has its funding slashed shows how out of touch science and politics are. For what it is worth, the authors of the articles make me think they will be good reading - I’ve not read it yet, but I’d suggest picking it up!

As a side note, I was listening to a pod-cast of Science Friday the other day and they had an interesting bit on the MESSENGER satellite’s return to Mercury. James Head, a professor from Brown University, was the guest. Early on in the interview he made the comment “science funding in the USA is at its lowest point in my lifetime.”