MIT Astrophysicist Deplores Budget Cuts

In an interview with Spanish national on-line medium El Pais, MIT astrophysicist Claude Canizares criticizes the current attempts by the US administration to cut spending on scientific research. 

"[These cuts] will be devastating. First of all, in the workforce: the younger generations who are going to make scientific breakthroughs in the future are being denied the opportunity. And frankly, they’re losing their jobs. [Many young researchers] are going to leave [the U.S.].

[Our country] benefits tremendously from international participants who come to the U.S., get their graduate degrees and then stay on, becoming faculty members at our major universities. The number of [American] Nobel Prize winners who were born outside of the U.S. is very large. But now, [among our] postdoctoral scientists who are very promising, [many] are going back to Europe to pursue their careers because of the uncertainty."

In terms of astrophysics, international participants in that field are used to an American system that is basically a welfare program for stargazers. What they "discover" has no bearing on life on earth and contributes nothing to the average or even well-educated person now or in the foreseeable future.  Knowing, in the way that astrophysicists seem to know about things happening many thousands of light years away and eons into the past, can't possibly be configured into knowledge that will make things better at the present time or for future generations. 

If astrophysics graduate students leave the US for positions in Europe or the Orient, will there be a fountain of funding available for them? Will the Germans and Chinese gleefully ignore their own terrestrial problems in favor of concentrating on deep space? If the US decreases its contributions to space studies will other countries be willing or able to take up the slack?

It might be possible that if the search for meaning in the cosmos is really so important, the tech billionaires of the quantum age will engrave their names in history by financing the project. But their contribution to the post-digital world is gathering and using the money of others, not their own. 

In any event, space exploration and astrophysics isn't going to get any cheaper. The US has gone as far as it should in being the main financial force in the quixotic investigation of the universe. It's time to get back to earth.