Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Trapped by the Webb

While the press crows about "dark energy," the real story is that Physics support is sinking. The Director of NASA's Astrophysics Division lords over a shrinking plate of projects. As this little blog has reported in What a Tangled Webb We Weave, When First We Practice to Deceive, and other posts, costs of the James Webb Space Telescope are consuming most of his budget. Some scenarios have JWST not launching until 2022-24. Any SNAP, JDEM, WFIRST or similar mission could not launch for at least 7 tears after.

Despite the press stories, only a tiny minority of scientists believe in "dark energy." Others try to invoke its existence to try to get more of the shrinking funding pie. There is not a single particle or track in a bubble chamber to prove DE's existence. Like the Emperor's New Clothes, it can only be seen by an enlightened few. With JWST delays, a "dark energy" mission will not fly until at least 2030! Long before then the world will know that the universe isn't accelerating, but light is slowing down.

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3 Comments:

Blogger Enagrama said...

I like your page so much^^

3:19 AM  
Blogger K said...

I did a search on technical jobs website DICE.com for "physicist" just now. It came up with only 4 jobs nationwide - one an analog electronics designer (an engineering job) and a software engineer job.

7:01 AM  
Blogger L. Riofrio said...

Aloha! A pleasure hearing from both of you. The number of jobs in Physics has been shrinking since the 1990's and cancellation of the Superconducting Supercollider. The "discovery of dark energy" in 1998 has not halted the slide, but may turn Physics into a laughingstock.

5:01 AM  

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