U.S. Army Assistant Secretary Malcolm R. O'Neill gave graduate science students some frank career advice last week, warning that federal budget constraints have NASA "hanging on by a thread". The comments took place during a discussion after a lecture O'Neill delivered to the physics department. O'Neill, who earned his PhD in physics from Rice University and was assigned as the head of the (in)famous "Star Wars" program, talked at length about military-related research, as well as the war in Afghanistan. The Afghan war costs taxpayers $10 billion per year, he said.
According to the space agency's published budget, the NASA budget is expected to be $20 billion per year. In addition to the shuttle program, NASA funds a wide range of basic and applied research, which takes up half of its budget. Examples of projects supported by NASA funding include Earth-observing satellites whose data are made freely-available to researchers, new water-purification systems, and of course, grants and training for the next generation of scientists.
The day after O'Neill's lecture, Dmitri Denisov of Fermi National Laboratory discussed the termination of the Tevatron experiment, due to federal budget constraints. During the discussion, faculty and students -- including those working on the Large Hadron Collider, the main competition of the Tevatron -- expressed audible signs of consternation and disappointment.
The enormous Tevatron collider in Illinois was responsible for the discovery of the top quark, among other achievements, and was the most powerful high-energy physics experiment on the planet until the Large Hadron Collider became operational in 2009. But the machinery and the labor of 1,200 physicists came at a price of $35 million per year. Now that the curtains have fallen on the Tevatron, it is likely the much sought-after Higgs boson (if it exists), as well as any surprises Nature may have in store for the Standard Model, will be discovered at the LHC, with European funding.
U.S. Army Assistant Secretary has given advice to the graduate science students some frank career advice last week. That would be helpful for them. And they can start their career.
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