U.S. abandons hunt for signal of cosmic inflation

https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-abandons-hunt-signal-cosmic-inflation

by bikenaga • 1 year ago

143 176 1 year ago

science.org

steveBK1232• 1 year ago

We have enough inflation domestically thank you

usui• 1 year ago

How much does searching for signals of cosmic inflation affect domestic inflation?

bravetraveler• 1 year ago

Roughly what Elon has [both possesses and performed]. I kid, sorry to see the science go

bluGill3• 1 year ago

We could probably measure it if you really want an accountant to do so. I don't think it is worthwhile getting a number. Lets go with very tiny effect.

However anything that is significant is things nobody will talk about.

jvanderbot• 1 year ago

We're well past quantifiable statements. The meme "Government spending causes inflation" is entrenched now in some segments and will be used to justify nearly any spending cut.

bee_rider• 1 year ago

The problem is that cosmic inflation is applied after domestic inflation, as a multiplier. So, we can’t say it is inconsequential in comparison.

Thankfully as soon as we stop measuring it, it will go away, because we as a society don’t have concepts like “object permanence” and “an objective underlying reality.”

ixtli5• 1 year ago

cant tell if you really believe funding science creates inflation lmao

steveBK1232• 1 year ago

It’s a play on the double meaning of the word thanks

drweevil• 1 year ago

Lowering inflation by cutting scientific research is like trying to free up disk space by deleting the odd text file. (Some numbers, for context: 2024 National Science Foundation budget ~$10B, Musk annual compensation at Tesla, ~$45B, Defense spending 2024 ~$850B)

Lowering inflation by cutting social services is like trying to free up disk space by deleting `/usr`. It will be devastating.

Meanwhile the wealthy have sequestered so much wealth for themselves that it makes any talk of "reducing inflation" by taking it out on the general population as the anti-democratic sham it is. Our government is purportedly Of the people, For the people, and By the people. For this to happen the government must function as an agent for the people, not just for the tiny minority of them who own the wealth.

echelon6• 1 year ago

While the US needs to get spending under control, the cuts to science sting.

A $1B cut for ΛCDM seems pragmatic as long as we focus on the economy. The cosmic background will still be waiting for us in four to ten years.

Unfortunately, it feels like the budget cuts being made are incredibly partisan and not actually helping pay down the debt spiral. Especially when the deficit is increasing.

Everything needs to be cut back, not just things one party doesn't care for.

doug_durham• 1 year ago

Or we need to increase revenues. Irresponsible tax cuts over the last decades have fueled the spiral. You need both responsible spending, and thoughtful revenue collecting.

sfpotter• 1 year ago

Or we could just raise taxes.

bluGill3• 1 year ago

Problem is most of the spending is on social services nobody is willing to touch. If you even think about touching Medicare/medicaid or SS: your own party will get rid of you. There are a lot of other things that are large budget items nobody can think touching.

GuinansEyebrows2• 1 year ago

Problem is

social services aren't a problem (sorry to be pedantic but i think it's really important to recognize that these things are necessary, and we can afford them).

most of the spending is on social services nobody is willing to touch. If you even think about touching Medicare/medicaid or SS

but the BBBA passed, with massive cuts to medicare/medicaid (which will have some insane downstream cost effects on the broader healthcare/insurance industry as a whole, which will be passed on to insured individuals).

your own party will get rid of you

that doesn't really appear to have happened to a degree that matters yet, because these orders are coming from the top of the GOP, but i suppose we'll see when the shit really hits the fan in the next couple of years.

buerkle• 1 year ago

The bill that was recently passed has massive cuts to medicare and medicaid

NoMoreNicksLeft2• 1 year ago

I'm not a big fan of social security, but social security revenue is supposed to be "off books"... wanting to cut the payable, but still keep the receivable is more than a little dishonest. And if we look at what's happened, I didn't see much in the way of "social services" that escaped the axe other than social security. There are, of course, cuts that could make a difference (the DEA alone is $10bil/year... and there's another $5-10bil used for DEA shit in the state dept. budget), but those are the ones that no one's willing to touch. We don't even immediately have to go after the military, though there's half a trillion per year there (or more) that could easily be cut. And guess what? Just as things are about to get desperate, world events are unfolding that will even make the most cowardly pacifist hesitate to take slices out of that.

eli_gottlieb• 1 year ago

Or we could undo the tax-cuts of the past 20 years to bring in revenue.

Larrikin2• 1 year ago

While the US needs to get spending under control

There is no evidence of this need and every single cut feels like it hurts the citizens more and more.

What needs to be done is an increase on taxes on the wealthiest corporations and people instead of cutting science funding, food benefits, and kicking people off their health insurance.

itishappy6• 1 year ago

There is no evidence of this need ...

Not sure I agree. Interest on our national debt is increasing (I believe it's third largest spending category, depending on how you break it down) and is expected to surpass defense spending this year.

The rest I totally agree with.

echelon6• 1 year ago

Should taxes increase while we're on the brink of recession?

Shouldn't we do austerity now, then tax increases during periods of prosperity?

Tax increases will trickle down and morph into unemployment, under-investment, and de-growth. Just look what ZIRP / Section 174 did to software engineers. Imagine that across the entire economy.

The power of the US economy is in its consumer base. People need to stay employed and see job/salary growth. That means companies need to spend more money on headcount and not cut costs.

runako• 1 year ago

not actually helping pay down the debt spiral

Just to be clear about the new budget law. It does not attempt to reduce the deficit or debt at all. It sidesteps existing law to increase the deficit beyond what is actually allowed.

The rate of increase of the debt increased last Friday, even as we are told we can't afford things we could afford 10 years ago.

Put simply, we were doing a better job of managing our debts until last Friday when we decided that the national debt doesn't matter.

sega_sai2• 1 year ago

What 'spending under control' you are talking about, when the recent big bill massively increased the deficit.

throwawaysleep• 1 year ago

it feels like the budget cuts being made are incredibly partisan and not actually helping pay down the debt spiral.

The recent legislative changes exploded the deficit. They didn’t reduce it.

Any concern by Conservatives about debt is fraudulent given their actual behaviour.

micromacrofoot• 1 year ago

Science funding is roughly 1% of the government budget "everything needs to be cut" is pure and utter hogwash.

frogperson• 1 year ago

You must be trolling. How does giving ICE $170 Billion, with a B, dollars have anything to do with curting spending? We are wathich the rise of a christian nationalist police state.

altcognito• 1 year ago

This is about populism as a reaction to "elites", such as those who head universities and science. They are looking to eliminate or replace them. The reality is this has nothing to do with debt or deficit. I'm not sure why this isn't understood. They've done nothing to hide this fact. They've been clear that they are replacing the heads of both private and public institutions with those that are loyal to the party head.

ixtli5• 1 year ago

NDT made this clear like a generation ago: its absolute nonsense to cut science funding to get federal "spending under control". The amount that goes to all of this is a drop in the bucket compared to military and subsidies. hell, we spend 1/10th of the total federal science funding (~200bn) per year JUST giving free money to oil and gas companies. trying to "fix" spending this way, even if it was actually reasonable to try and do, is tantamount to trying to save to buy a house by eating two fewer avocado toasts per week.

antithesizer2• 1 year ago

not even noticing how ideological the "need" to cut is

Whitey still on the moon

aspenmayer• 1 year ago

Underrated reference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitey_on_the_Moon

aitacobell• 1 year ago

The added bummer is that space funding cuts aren't just hurting public projects, they're also killing private companies that rely on the government as a customer.

cultofmetatron2• 1 year ago

its fine, with all the new contracts to open private prisons to house "illegals" that we're going to rent out to corporations for pennies on the dollar and weapons contracts so that we can gift israel with bombs to murder Palestinian babies, it should all even out. /s

CommenterPerson• 1 year ago

Hey another way to dumb down the country. Become second rate at particle physics (LHC), aerospace (Boeing), cut funding from universities, <TLDR list goes here>.

But we're #1 on social media!

smith70182• 1 year ago

China is actually #1 with social media at this point

slowmovintarget2• 1 year ago

Boeing was self-inflicted with the takeover of management by the McDonnell-Douglas bozos. They destroyed Boeing's ability from within, all on their own.

wpm5• 1 year ago

A case study of the symptoms of neoliberal "profit at all costs" MBA mindset. Enshittify the services. Enshittify the planes. Enshittify the cars. Enshittify the food. Turn everything to shit, so that the line can go up one more quarter.

qoez• 1 year ago

This kinda sucks but on the other hand, it's not like we won't figure this out eventually in humanitys history. There's no rush

ctoth• 1 year ago

Frankly I don't care if we figure it out after I'm dead, and I'm not sure why you would either. I want to know now

toast0• 1 year ago

I's certainly an interesting question; but what will we do differently if we find that the rate of cosmic inflation has been changing?

There's typically a lot of hidden value in exploring these kinds of things, and I get that, but there's not usually any particular urgency on any of them either.

Also, from the last paragraph of the article, it sounds like this was already on a path towards not getting funded; IMHO, it's not a major shift to get a final letter ending the project when construction was not approved a year ago.

DaSHacka• 1 year ago

Then feel free to donate to organizations to fund it now, and the rest of us that don't care just won't.

advisedwang• 1 year ago

You know, we don't actually ever need to find out. We can just rest easy knowing that it's possible to find out in the future. That's basically as good as knowing.

dehrmann• 1 year ago

These sorts of comments always get downvoted to hell because HN are true believers in science, especially space and NASA. The arguments for funding extremely time-insensitive research are usually de minimis (we spend so much more on X) or to beat the Russians/Chinese. Mass transit proponents have a similar relationship with opportunity cost. Yes, we can build California High Speed Rail, but would there be more net benefit by using the money to improve Bay Area and LA transit? You have to value these things against where the money would otherwise go.

AIorNot• 1 year ago

We keep winning don’t we? The winning doesn’t stop

sega_sai2• 1 year ago

Who needs science, when you can have tax cuts for the rich ?

zzzeek3• 1 year ago

more than that, who needs science, when you can have a stressed, desperate and ignorant populace that's easily pliable ?

Drunkfoowl• 1 year ago

Who needs science when all your questions are answered by “gods will/gods plan”.

It’s pathetic, and 100% why we see the ongoing attack on science and education.

yndoendo• 1 year ago

Who need science when you can sell and market pseudo science to the populous?

tlogan• 1 year ago

If we do not detect after glow does this mean that cosmic inflation did not happen?

rcshubhadeep• 1 year ago

Papa did not like this. This toy doesn't make noise (or noise enough)!

ixtli5• 1 year ago

best country ever

krunck• 1 year ago

Gotta save the money for the neo-con's coming war with China. False flag in three, two, one...

ta8645• 1 year ago

Obviously this administration has no interest in the homeless, but I'm personally a little tired of all the ivory tower elites getting upset that their intellectual play toys are in jeopardy, when millions of people struggle for food and healthcare.

And this isn't a matter of "you can do two things at once"; we should provide for our own people _before_ we worry about cosmic inflation.

smith70182• 1 year ago

The Big Beautiful Bill will add $4.5 trillion to the deficit in the next decade. If we hadn't passed it, we could have continued learning about cosmic inflation _and_ helped millions of people regarding food and healthcare and still saved trillions in the process. Of course, America would never do that, but our current issue is no longer "we should be helping people instead of doing unnecessary spending." Now we're squarely in "let's starve everyone of resources and give it all to the 1%."

whodidntante6• 1 year ago

The BBB will add $4.5T (this is the largest estimate) in addition to the $15T-$20T that would have happened without the BBB

The debt would have been about $52T+, now it will be $56T+, if projections are accurate.

While I do not agree with the BBB for many reasons, and I do agree that it increases the debt, it is not the primary driver of the debt.

The largest driver of our debt is our "health" system. We spend $5T a year on our "health" system, which is twice the amount per capita that western European nations spend, and we have outcomes that are, across the board, worse.

We spend $2.5T more per year than we "should" be spending on "health", which is by far the largest waste of our resources.

If we would "simply" find a way to spend as much as western Europe does (even keeping our poorer outcomes), we would save $25T over the next 10 years. Our entire national debt could be eliminated in 20 years by doing this, even with the BBB.

GuinansEyebrows2• 1 year ago

i agree ideologically, but the cuts are all coming from one ideological group of people bent on omnicidal domination of the planet. to them, healthcare and food for poor people is literally as unimportant as space exploration (unless it benefits the revolving-door relationship). we who oppose this should not cede ground on anything because those who propose this will not, either.

jeltz• 1 year ago

Yes, it is a matter of that you can do two things at once. There is nothibg preventing the US from doing both other than that the current government is actively opposed to both funding research and helping the homeless.

ac7943• 1 year ago

It's worth keeping in mind that the budget for scientific funding in developed nations is typically ~1-2% of the total budget. Most of that money usually goes to medical research (as it should), which directly improves the quality of life for millions of people. The remainder goes into R&D which drives progress, yielding benefits across many different industries. Slashing the science budget and investing that money in homelessness instead would probably not fix homelessness in HCOL areas (issues are structural) and would end up being a major net negative for the rest of society.

kmac_• 1 year ago

Historically, the center of scientific innovation shifted from Europe to the United States approximately a century ago, and is currently showing signs of transitioning towards China.

Retric• 1 year ago

China is going to need to get a lot better about immigration and fraud for that to really happen.

ixtli5• 1 year ago

it doesn't seem like they're having any issue with it in the past 5-10 really. its not that hard to go to the mainland if you have science or engineering creds these days.

arresin• 1 year ago

Transitioning back towards China where it even more historically was.

slowmovintarget2• 1 year ago

Except historically, China didn't propagate technology. It was used at the discretion of the emperor and held as a secret. They had moveable type before Gutenberg, but had a culture, government, and language that were all factors against its propagation. They had a navy second to none, but found the rest of the world not interesting (Confucian Conservatism is one theory) and dismantled it, nearly a century before Magellan's voyages. If anything, their knowledge leaked to the rest of the world as opposed to them leading it.

Today, China is playing Go with the world as their board. We have to start counting liberties on our groups; the late game is now.

cedws• 1 year ago

Seems like every time I see a paper more than half the names on it are Chinese.

herbst6• 1 year ago

Is there any metric to quantify this as a fact or is it just one of these things US people keep telling themself?

In my lifetime I never got the impression that any area was particularly the scientific leader.

_w1tm• 1 year ago

How many technological innovations do you remember from the past 20 years and from which areas did they come from?

spookie• 1 year ago

There are a lot of inflationary ways China grows their numbers. From sketchy journals owned by the government to made up stuff.

Yeul2• 1 year ago

Satellites and telescopes can be easily verified.

zozbot234• 1 year ago

Folks, let me tell you: nobody thought it could be done, but your favorite President (that's me, by the way) took on cosmic inflation and won, big league. We passed the spectacular Inflation Reduction Act - everybody's talking about it - and guess what? It didn't just tame rising prices here on Earth. No, no, we went ALL THE WAY. We ended cosmic inflation EVERYWHERE too. Incredible, right?

First of all, they said "not possible." Scientists, astrophysicists, even Big Foot was scratching his head! Nobody could figure out how to stop the universe from exponentially expanding faster than my rally crowds. But under my leadership, we negotiated the best cosmic deal. We deployed state-of-the-art interest-rate spinners on dark energy, put tariffs on runaway space-time, and - I'm not kidding - built the beautiful galactic wall to keep excess inflation out of the Milky Way!

The results? Beautiful. The universe has stabilized. No more exponential bloat! Stars remain at just the right distance, galaxies keep their perfect shape, and astronomers can finally retire their "Big Bang gone wild" theories! Our beautiful Inflation Reduction Act also saved trillions of light-years' worth of energy - making it green, making it lean, and letting us focus on what really matters: making America go WOW again!

Now the Fake News Media will try to discredit us: "Impossible!" they'll cry. But we know the truth. We have the best cosmic economists, the smartest black-hole negotiators, and let me tell you, they're all saying the same thing: "Sir, you've done what no one else could!" So join me in celebrating the greatest cosmic achievement in history. We've ELIMINATED inflation, not just here at home, but across the ENTIRE UNIVERSE. That's what winning looks like, folks!

antithesizer2• 1 year ago

A decade into his political career and we're still doing this.

tclancy• 1 year ago

If we stop doing this more people will start believing him. Perhaps it would be better to point out that a decade into his political career, he’s still doing this.

nilamo• 1 year ago

A decade into his political career and we're still doing this.

Satire? I think political satire has been around for a whole lot more than just one decade, friend.

c0nducktr• 1 year ago

Is there a reason to stop? He still speaks this way.

98codes• 1 year ago

Even the satire is too depressing at this point.

npinsker• 1 year ago

Especially since it’s AI generated.

amanaplanacanal• 1 year ago

That was way too coherent to be the current president.

khrbrt• 1 year ago

Meanwhile China is building it's own giant telescopes: https://www.science.org/content/article/china-quietly-prepar...

And will soon launch their own version of Hubble: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xuntian

Deeply embarrassing as a US citizen.

cultofmetatron2• 1 year ago

Deeply embarrassing as a US citizen.

agreed. America's attitude towards china has been absurd. instead of seeing it as an opportunity for us to step up, we deflect responsibility as if america was forced to offshore its manufacturing and venerate idiots over scientists.

Teever3• 1 year ago

I think a big part of it is that the admission that offshoring was a bad idea that has created a threat to American hegemony would require acknowledgement that neoliberalism has been an abject failure and a ruse by the upper class to suck up capital and political power from the middle class.

That sort of discussion and the consequences from having it just isn't on the menu.

There isn't going to be a massive wealth redistribution in the other direction to offset the redistribution that has taken place over the last 40 years. There isn't going to be taxation reforms to prevent this from occuring again. There isn't going to be a focus on white collar crimes from the Justice department.

Things are just going to slowly get worse and worse in America.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sLSveRGmpIE&pp=0gcJCfwAo7VqN5t...

echelon6• 1 year ago

Can this be expressed on a graph?

Can we see expenditures, big equipment contributions, Nobel prizes, etc. on a graph?

itishappy6• 1 year ago

Expenditures:

https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20246/cross-national-compariso...

readthenotes1• 1 year ago

"Deeply embarrassing as a US citizen."

Agreed. The US has squandered so much money over the decades that they're now over $300k/taxpayer in debt, with interest to that that being the fourth largest cost, and two of the top three being insufficiently funded programs that simply steal from the grandchildren.

It would be even more embarrassing if we didn't cut back on non-essential spending.

U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time https://share.google/adgsGnl43Yk8S0zDq

apical_dendrite• 1 year ago

Yeah, let's cut back on the relatively small investments in science that actually grow the economy, particularly at a moment in time when our geopolitical competitors are making enormous investments, and when leadership and talent in science is more important than ever.

Just walk around the Boston area and look at how much of the economy is driven by federal research funding attracting global talent to universities, which then generates ideas and the next generation of talent, which feeds the biotech companies, which grow the economy.

Letting all of that happen in China instead of the US just to make a tiny dent in the deficit (and to punish progressive institutions and prevent cultural change from immigration) is unbelievably fucking stupid.

Gud• 1 year ago

Being at the forefront of science is not ~non-essential~.

It is literally one of the most important things to make a nation great.

ujkhsjkdhf234• 1 year ago

Trump just added 4 trillion more in debt funding tax cuts for billionaire. The amount of money science research gets in the US is pennies compared to that. Investments in science always returns on investment in the form of technology. The internet was a research project mind you.

mcphage• 1 year ago

It would be even more embarrassing if we didn't cut back on non-essential spending.

Boy are you going to feel bad as you watch what happens to the debt over the next few years.

wpm5• 1 year ago

Perhaps this pain would be worth it if we also cut back on non-essential tax-cuts for the rich.

Instead, we're cutting cheap scraps like this from the budget while the fattest fucks at the table get to gorge themselves for another two years.

47282847• 1 year ago

I wish we could operate on the principle of data sharing in science. What a waste of resources to needlessly replicate and compete. Also, great, somebody else is doing it so we don’t have to! Less work for us.

mosesbp• 1 year ago

This is already how astronomy, and specifically cosmology, research works in the US (and most other places). Data is made public within a short period of obtaining it on a schedule (usually less than a couple years) that is set before data is taken.

It is far from clear that the Chinese government supports this type of open data sharing.

herbst6• 1 year ago

You are embarrassed because other countries can do things too?

autoexec• 1 year ago

Seems like it's more because other counties can do things we no longer can or are willing to.

whodidntante6• 1 year ago

This, and many other things in the area of science, is an embarrassment.

However, I feel that what is argued about, by all sides, misses the point.

The US spends 2X what China does on civilian space programs, and 4X what Europe spends. We spend 2X as much on health care, 1.5X as much on education, and 2X as much on science research.

Our systems are inefficient and corrupt, and that is what needs to be addressed.

Arguing for or against how much money we need to spend or to cut is just the modern day circus that distracts everyone from the real problems and provides everyone on both sides with feel good excuses.

Arainach2• 1 year ago

Our systems are inefficient and corrupt, and that is what needs to be addressed.

Citation needed. Even Musk's DOGE trolls found no evidence of significant corruption/inefficiency.

Yeul2• 1 year ago

Yeah but does China have tax cuts for the rich?

Because let's be real here all the patriotism is just a facade the rich want to keep the money for themselves. Singing the national anthem on the fourth of July is cheap.

autobodie• 1 year ago

"Nationalism is a bourgeois trick.” —Vladimir Lenin

elcritch3• 1 year ago

Yes, especially if you’re part of the CCP [1]. Well if they’re taxed at all. Can’t be taxed if you hide your wealth.

At least the wealth of the richest people in the US is made by people producing value and services. Bezos is rich because people like myself find Amazon and AWS to be quite good.

IMHO, the biggest wealth problem in the US is the rise of upper-middle class “elites” and management class. The one driving “mergers and acquisitions” to reduce competition between grocery stores or using rent control software to eke up rent costs.

1: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/oct/8/intelligence...

biohcacker84• 1 year ago

On the other hand, the US is close to bankruptcy. And that's not all the current admin's fault.

And their cuts are trying to avoid that, although they have thrown out many babies with the bath water. It's hard to blame them for trying to avoid default, which would be far worse than anything.

The program apparently cost $900 million which is not a trivial cost.

Moomoomoo309• 1 year ago

Yeah, except for the tax cuts for the wealthy which created more debt than all of their other cuts combined, and then some.

lofaszvanitt• 1 year ago

Why? China will do the job, instead of US...

kdavis• 1 year ago

Guth may never get a Nobel.

lupusreal2• 1 year ago

Can anybody steel man the practical value of this kind of research for me? It seems to me that almost all astronomy, particularly the sort studying very large scale phenomena like this, is essentially useless for humanity. The best it does is satisfy our curiosity about the nature of our reality, but when the subject of study is something so huge there's no chance of it ever having practical application to humanity (unlike quantum mechanics!) As for the argument that it "kills private companies" who are contracting for the government on projects like this, it seems very much like a broken windows fallacy. If the government went around breaking everybody's windows that would be great for the private companies that replace windows, but so what?

The most useful kind of astronomy is searching our solar system for dangerous rocks so that we might avert disaster. Anything beyond our solar system is just useless stargazing, everything out there is too far away for us to do anything with or about. Theories about reality which can only be validated or ruled out by looking at things so far away cannot have local relevance to us, or else whatever local phenomenon they govern which might be useful to us could also be used to test that theory.

(For the record, I think this administration are a bunch of morons.)

zzzeek3• 1 year ago

do you ever use GPS? is it handy? Where's the society that has never done astronomy yet has GPS ?

lupusreal2• 1 year ago

Sorry, but that doesn't work. (Your argument, not GPS.)

Relativity was discovered after discrepancies were noticed in observations of Mercury, right in our solar system. Not through observations of distant galaxies. And suppose Mercury was never studied, or in fact never existed; would that make GPS impossible for humanity? Of course not. Relativity is relevant to GPS because it has effects on the scale of GPS, and can therefore be discovered and studied by simply putting very accurate clocks into orbit. Had it not already been known of when GPS was created, it would have been discovered soon after.

In fact, studying very large and very distant things, other galaxies namely, has revealed discrepancies that suggest general relativity might not be the whole story. But is that relevant to GPS? Not in the slightest.

ac7943• 1 year ago

Most of the benefits of blue(dark?)-sky research are unpredictable almost by definition. We're exploring for the sake of finding answers about the universe, and in the process learning 'unknown unknowns' which may pay off later. Using your example - quantum mechanics wasn't invented with computer chips in mind.

Having said that I think that there are some practical benefits coming from this research that aren't commonly discussed. For example: adaptive optics - which is heavily used in astronomy - is also used in medical imaging and national defense. Astronomers also drive a lot of detector development. Previously this was the CCD, now things are moving into new, exotic devices like MKIDs. Maybe one of these new detectors will end up in a mobile phone camera in the future, and you'll be able to take excellent photos in low-light levels. There are many more examples I'm sure, but this is just what I have off the top of my head..

The final practical AND philosophical application I can think of, is that we are about 10-20 years away from putting direct constraints on life in the universe. A big proportion of astronomers are currently working on this. I think an answer to this question will dramatically change how society views itself.

II2II2• 1 year ago

Your list of more modern benefits reminded me of a more modern discovery, one that is directly relevant to this article: the CMB itself was discovered as background noise in microwave communications systems.

II2II2• 1 year ago

Can anybody steel man the practical value of this kind of research for me? It seems to me that almost all astronomy, particularly the sort studying very large scale phenomena like this, is essentially useless for humanity.

The funny thing is: this science with few direct application to human affairs is one of the oldest sciences. Those few applications, as a standard of time and use in navigation, have had a far greater impact upon the establishment of human civilization than any other scientific discover.

It would be easy to argue that those are things of the distant past and that other branches of science have a more direct impact today. That's true. Yet it is also true that our curiosity of the heavens has been a constant. While our early notions were pure nonsense, they shaped society. While our initial discoveries of its true nature had little immediate impact upon everyday life, it formed the basis of future scientific development. For example: the Copernican model of the solar system was more true to the actual form of the solar system, but it was less accurate than the more refined Ptolemaic model. Kepler figured out the ellipses bit, through the extensive observations of Tycho Brahe. Observations of planetary motion provided evidence for Newton's theory of gravitation. Ironically, observations of planetary motion also lead to the refinement of the classical model by Einstein. The understanding of gravity has been fundamental to engineering. While it is plausible that much of that would have been discovered without astronomy, the development of special and general relativity depended upon astronomy. One of the most important applications of that is GPS.

Now it would be easy to argue almost all of these discoveries have their basis in the study of the solar system, but that's not really the point. In the times of Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton, the utility of studying the motions of the planets would appear to have about as much relevance as the study of the CMB does today. They certainly would not have been able to predict what we have discovered due to the foundations they laid. The same can be said of modern astrophysics. We can claim that it may help us detect and understand the nature of gravitation waves. We can claim that it is a handy tool since "the universe" is better at building particle accelerators than we are. Yet even if we made astounding discoveries along those line, people would still ask: what use is it? We can't really provide an honest answer for that since we have yet to travel that path through time (i.e. we don't know what the future holds).

If you ever have a chance, I suggest reading a book on the history of astronomy. You will find many names that you will probably know from other branches of science, and learn of the many discoveries that have been made or facilitated through astronomical research. (That's particularly true of physics and mathematics.)

potamic2• 1 year ago

I mean that can be said of any research, couldn't it? 400 years back, nobody would have dreamed that studying why these dots in the night sky move will help us understand tides on earth. 200 years back no one would have imagined that the key to health and diseases are some invisible organisms in the air no one can see. A mere 100 years back it would've been impossible to conceive that these imaginary "atoms" will lead to reserves of immense energy. And yet here we are today living in a world only made possible because of what people did before.

The cosmic microwave background is not even something imaginary far away in time or space. It is radiation that surrounds us in the present. It is passing by the earth constantly, all the time. There's some research trying to use it for space navigation, but no one knew you could do that when they pointed antennas randomly in the sky. The amount of cross over some research has to a lot of other research and eventually to practical applications cannot be easily comprehended. Science builds upon science in very complex and convoluted ways with each step being that people simply tried to find more about something around them that they did not know. If you knew how to find it, then there's nothing to research in the first place, is there?

There must be so much information in cosmic microwave radiation about things we may not even know. Who knows if it could lead to uncovering information about dark matter or dark energy and who knows where that information would take human civilization. At this time, research simply indicates that you find out as much about it as you can, because it is there!

ted_dunning2• 1 year ago

This is pretty bizarre to cut US support for a project and still claim that the project is US-led.

ethagknight• 1 year ago

Didn’t JWST recently present confounding evidence against one of of the core assumptions of big bang theory, thereby invalidating it? Something about the faint, far off “redshift” background radiation from the beginning of time was actually coming from a much closet newer source , not what the theories held? I’ll repost paper if I can find it.

KolenCh• 1 year ago

It really hurts to see this happening. CMB-S4, stands for stage 4, is a huge collaborative effort that units many CMB scientists and experiments, in a sense that stage 1 to 3 experiments are “converging” towards this.

To put that in context, CMB-S4 being a DOE project has many side effects to other CMB experiments in a lot of ways. For example, a few years ago the LiteBIRD mission led by JAXA from Japan has been gaining momentum, and many international CMB scientists got involved. European scientists got funded by ESA, and US scientists were expecting NASA to fund them too. In the end they denied the proposal (despite generally positive impressions when discussing with various people there), partly because they think the satellite based CMB experiment LiteBIRD has significant overlap with the goals of the ground based CMB experiment CMB-S4, deeming it unnecessary to support LiteBIRD.

And then CMB scientists used to get generous access to NERSC, a top 10 HPC system in the world. But as CMB-S4 becomes a DOE project, NERSC being DOE funded also, it becomes a bit of conflict there, in the sense that they feel they need to prioritize access for CMB-S4 to guarantee its success. There are many other factors in play but in the end it becomes much more difficult to even get access to the system, not to mention having any sizable allocation.

All these might not be so bad as CMB-S4 is supposed to be our endgame. It would benefits the CMB community as a whole so much. But now? It’s game over.

It also hurts particle physics progress as well. Long story short, the CMB B-mode holds a promising sensitivity to inflationary models, that its discovery may finally makes inflation falsifiable. At the very least, it involves an energy scale so high that no experiments on Earth can reach, and therefore is a good complement, to high energy physics experiments such as LHC.

There is a reason it is deemed so important in both the decadal survey and the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel.

Project like this has under heavy scrutiny from both the scientific community and the funding parties around feasibility, risks, costs, etc. It wasn’t a a light decision to have had happened in the beginning. Why would the end come so abruptly without explanation?

U.S. abandons hunt for signal of cosmic inflation

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