US Can't Meet The "Grand Challenges" of Physics

BlueSky writes "A new report paints a troubling picture of the state of physics research in the US, which the authors believe has dire consequences for the competitiveness of the US. 'The report identifies six key questions that will represent the grand challenges that materials science will face over the coming decade, the ones most likely to produce the next revolution. But it also raises fears that those challenges will be met by researchers outside of the US. It highlights the fact that government funding has not kept up with the rising costs of research at the same time that the corporate-funded research lab system has collapsed. As a result, US scientific productivity has stagnated at a time when funding and output are booming overseas.'"

so?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, all the major physics breakthroughs have been made outside US. What's new?

Re:Oh noes, some other country may pull its weight

[PatrickThomson]

You do realise that europeans have been living with those costs of car fuel for the last 15 years, right? Here in the UK, all it means is that poor people take the bus, and there are more buses to cater for all the poor people. And students.

Re:Oh noes, some other country may pull its weight

[drgonzo59]

You do realise(sic) that Americans don't have a very good public transportation system at all and a lot of them live in small towns that do not have any kind of public transportation. For most Americans no car = no job.

Re:I Love this

[bhmit1]

Considering how hated America is by the whole of the world, don't you think its very important for America to remain the strongest nation, because lathough in the past it could have faded into insignificance and no one would have cared, it would just be another economy, but now there are people just waiting for America to fall.

I don't believe they really want us to fail, unless you've fallen for the fear mongering that confuses other world powers with the terrorists. However, they do want us to be indebted to them. Take the middle east with the oil profits they get from us. Take China with their huge stocks of US currency from the years of trade imbalances. Take India with the outsourcing movement and all their call centers. With the increasing globalization of the world's economies, any major competitor to the US would be shooting themselves in the foot to try to destroy us. Yet profiting from our laziness and ignorance is exactly what all the foreign blooming super powers want to do, and indeed, will do.

My biggest fear is that neither the US people, government, nor economy will be ready to be removed from the top position. We'll continue spending all our time and effort building walls to "keep the bad guys out" while forgetting that we need to "make some good guys within."

Re:Oh noes, some other country may pull its weight

[Alioth]

$6 a gallon? It's over $8/usg here, but the economy is growing at around 6% (admittedly, we're a small island which has become very desirable to live in).

The solution? On any nice day, I ride my bicycle the 25 mile round trip to work. On a nice week I can save the equivalent of about US$40 in driving costs.

Re:Oh noes, some other country may pull its weight

[MemoryDragon]

Ahem not only poor people, taking public transport is a very common usage of transportation over here.

Re:The biggest threat to America

[Germik]

Paul Graham made an interesting point about the crappy K-12 in the US. Here's the thing he wrote: http://paulgraham.com/america.html [paulgraham.com].

It's under the 10th reason, America Has Dynamic Typing for Careers.

Re:Oh noes, some other country may pull its weight

[turbofisk]

In Stockholm it's far more efficient in some cases to take the public transports (subway or busses), even ministers take the subway to work... There are a lot of gridlocks in Stockholm which don't face the buses who are on their own lane... There are a couple of "core" buss routes where a bus comes along every 2-4 minutes during peak hours and 5-6 of peak ours and 6-10 minutes during night. The result? Taking the bus is far faster and you can work, read, etc while doing it...

I call bullshit

[caudron]

I've said this before, but the real numbers say that this article is wrong [digitalelite.com].

We outspend every other country by FAR on science and technology. This may be useful propaganda to get the US to reinvigorate public interest in science again, but private and governmental interest has never waned.

Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/ [digitalelite.com]

Re:Intelligent Design Advocates

[Zeinfeld]

You're saying that the IRA stopped fighting for their idea of freedom because some Islamic radicals flew aeroplanes into New York skyscrapers? Wow. Just wow.

9/11 proved that terrorism was simply never going to work for them. Adams and co knew that they were never going to get their lads to fly airplanes into buildings and even if they could find a suicide squad they couldn't bomb people into submission.

A faction called the 'Real IRA' murdered another 28 people until they were put out of business by a combination of the Irish police, British police and a couple of assasinations by their former comrades.

Rudy attended an IRA fundraiser immediately after 9/11 (the organizers wisely decided to give the money to the 9/11 victim's families fund, or at least claim to), but he made sure that nobody photographed him next to his old friend Gerry Adams. Even Rudy could tell that terrorism was no longer a vote winner, time for a flippety-flop.

Re:Oh noes, some other country may pull its weight

[mrcdeckard]

yes, but the problem is not high prices of fuel per se -- it's the lack of infrastructure. the big car/tire companies bought and dismantled the public transit system of many major american cities years ago. consequently, many people rely on their cars to commute to work. in addition, everybody here STILL insists on driving the largest car possible. it's weird.

in st louis, the public transit system is essentially broken. i will say that i've noticed many more scooters on the street since gas hit $3/gal, however.

mr c

Re:Oh noes, some other country may pull its weight

[rossifer]

Heh. Your bike sounds great for you. Let us know how you feel about those "Gas guzzling SUVs" when you have a family.

You should visit Copenhagen or Amsterdam or (any other bicycle friendly European city). When visiting Amsterdam, I saw at least three different bicycle designs for carrying two young children and several bags of groceries on a bicycle. When the kids get too big for the child seats, get them their own bikes.

On one occasion, I saw a very fit father, two young children, one infant, and two bags of groceries pedaling down the bicycle lane of the street. Seemed to be doing just fine, if a little sweaty.

Back here in the states, I find the sedan or minivan to be superior to the "Gas guzzling SUV" for transporting two or three kids and groceries. Though I have tried to get one of those bicycles over here, the shipping is completely prohibitive. I am intensely curious as to how practical the production Chevy Volt will be for a small family. I'm hoping it looks more like the Saturn Astra than the Saturn Sky, but at this point, who knows.

Ross

Re:And who can weee thank for this?

[Walt Dismal]

I truncated the correct full directive title, sorry. it's National Security Presidential Directive 51, and in it Bush assumes total power for himself in the event of his declaring a national emergency.

See http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTI CLE_ID=55824 [worldnetdaily.com]

or any of the other discussions about it. There are many. Only a fool would call this directive harmless. In the event of ANYTHING Bush chooses to call an emergency, he by self-proclamation assumes power over all government functions:

"When the president determines a catastrophic emergency has occurred, the president can take over all government functions and direct all private sector activities to ensure we will emerge from the emergency with an "enduring constitutional government."

Translated into layman's terms, when the president determines a national emergency has occurred, the president can declare to the office of the presidency powers usually assumed by dictators to direct any and all government and business activities until the emergency is declared over."

The problem with this directive is, it is also up to Bush to declare when the emergency is over. Nice, huh?

A physicist's perspective

[tbo]

Disclaimer: I'm a young physicist at a top-five research university in the US. I'm not a condensed matter physicist, but I work in a "neighboring" field.

The problem isn't funding--it's what we do with it. Oh, sure, we could use lots more money, but it's not the real problem. Before I get into the details, let's briefly pick apart some of the nonsense in the National Academy of Science's Condensed-Matter and Materials Physics report, such as their supposed "grand challenges":

How do complex phenomena emerge from simple ingredients?

When you increase the size of your system, your state space generally grows exponentially. Of course it gets complex. Figuring out the specific complex behaviors of various systems isn't a single grand challenge, it's a whole lot of little challenges (unless you're talking about superconductivity, which I'll revisit).

How will the energy demands of future generations be met?

Long-term? It's probably fusion, which isn't a condensed matter problem; try nuclear and plasma physics.

What is the physics of life?

This is bio-physics, not condensed matter. Condensed matter is only one of many fields contributing to bio-physics.

What happens far from equilibrium and why?

This one seems legitimate, although it would be more interesting if they framed it in terms of some of the big problems in non-equilibrium physics.

What new discoveries await us in the nanoworld?

This doesn't even make sense as a research challenge. It could at least have been framed as a question involving nanotechnology.

How will the information technology revolution be extended?

Here it seems like private industry is doing a very good job with the short-to-medium term. Long term, the answer may well be quantum information, which is my own field. Some of the approaches to building quantum computers are condensed matter-based, but many aren't.

The big thing I'm surprised not to see on the list is superconductivity. One estimate I heard was that something like 40% of all physicists have worked on it at some point in their careers (for me, it was as an undergrad, albeit peripherally). Despite the enormous research effort, we still don't have a really solid handle on how it works.

I'm really unimpressed by the "grand challenges" the NAS was able to come up with; it reeks of committee work. For comparison, I could write a much better list for my own field. Just off the top of my head:

• How can we use quantum key distribution to make a secure replacement for public key cryptography?
• How do we engineer quantum systems with both the high degree of control and excellent isolation from noise needed for quantum computing?
• Can "quantum weirdness" really exist at the mesoscopic or macroscopic scale (i.e., what Tony Leggett [wikipedia.org] has been talking about recently)
• Are quantum computers fundamentally more powerful than classical computers (i.e., is BP a proper subset of BQP)?
• Aside from the quantum fourier transform, are there any classes of quantum algorithms that are exponentially faster than their classical counterparts?
• How do we actually build a quantum computer?

Similarly, the NAS suggestions also seem to be the product of a shy and timid committee. There's the usual--more outreach, more women/minorities, more education, more money. There's also a pining for the old days of Bell labs and such, but no realistic consideration of how to bring it back (which would of course start with figuring out why it left), beyond a call for more discussions.

The countries that do the most to meet [the challenges] will benefit the most economically.

(Playing devil's advocate) Why is that so? Basic research is available to everyone. The country that benef

Re:And why is this a problem?

[Koookiemonster]

Someone predicted the fall of USA some years ago to happen in the year of 2025. But once Bush was elected to be a president, he adjusted his estimation down to 2020. And then Bush was re-elected...

This someone was Johan Galtung. From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

During the 70s, he predicted the downfall of the Soviet Union in 1990 with a precision of less than a year.

That is impressive indeed. He should be taken seriously.

Re:And who can weee thank for this?

[sumdumass]

Lol.. No, My hot button is when people live in a fantasy land and refuse to look at the real world. You gave up, I called you out. Your still not addressing the points I made. Is this an attempts to change the issue? Maybe a way to save face without admitting anything?

As for the WMDs... I gave you a link to the UN inspectors website with direct reports concerning them. The only reason you missed reading about them is because you refused to read about them. And don't call them the inquirer, it just shows how ignorant you are. I mean I laid it out complete with links to international organizations and third party government reports. If this isn't anything on your radar, you need to shut up about the entire subject. You definably aren't qualified to sit in the same room with it.

I would suggest you get over the brainwashing and stop being intellectually lazy. Go read about them. Then come back and tell me you disagree if you can. Or you could sit there and make fun thinking your kewl and all, as if no one else followed those links and are now thinking what an ass you are.