The New Curiosity Shop

Today it was announced that two scientists at Manchester University were awarded the Nobel prize for Physics (see Materials breakthrough wins Nobel). Meanwhile, the Coalition Government are threatening cuts to the very lifeblood of this country, by cutting funding to science research. Such short-sightedness fair takes your breath away. As it says at Science is Vital:

“Investing in research enriches society and helps drive the economy. It led to our preeminent position in the 20th century, and will be vital in meeting the challenges of the 21st century whether they be in energy, medicine, infrastructure, computing, or simply humanity’s primal desire for discovery.”

If you want a simple analogy, if a farmer sells his fields, where does he grow is crops and what does he eat next year?

Of all the threatened cuts, reducing funding to science makes no sense whatsoever.

If you feel the same as me, please go to the Science is Vital website and sign the petition, write to your MP.

Cheers

Noel

In the small hours of tomorrow morning, NASA’s LCROSS spacecraft will crash land on the moon. The craft will be deliberately hard-landed in two sections providing data about the composition of the lunar surface. NASA TV will provide live coverage and you can find out more on the Spaceweather site.

images courtesy of NASA

Government ministers have called for science teachers to work harder to attract pupils to science. It appears that Scotland is no longer the leader in science education that it used to be, falling behind countries like Kazakhstan, Slovenia and Armenia.

The biggest gap in cool science is in the crucial earlier years, from primary school up to Standard Grade. Pupils are not being challenged to rethink stereotypes of scientists nor being turned on to the importance of science to our 21st century society.

The Scottish government has awarded a grant of £2.1 million to the Scottish Schools Equipment Research Centre to support the professional development of science teachers and technicians, and has provided £250,000 for the continuous professional development of primary teachers, to be administered at the four science centres across the country. It has also provided pilot funding of £140,000 to help set up and strengthen school science clubs.

More from the Times Online ….

NASA has announced the names of the researchers who will start the Lunar Science Institute. The seven scientists will head research teams in a number of areas of lunar science, all directed towards making the best use of future lunar exploration. While the engineering work on a new manned spacecraft system is under review, possibly forcing NASA to fall back on existing technology such as Atlas, the creation of a Science Institute is probably a more convincing step in showing the commitment of the US to a return to the Moon.

Carle Pieters of Brown University will head a group investigating the Moon in the context of the early development of Earth, Venus, Mercury and Mars. The scientific and exploration potential of the lunar poles will be investigated by a team led by Ben Bussey of  Johns Hopkins University. David Kring of the Lunar and Planetary Institute will be looking at how impacts were important in the formation of the Moon. The lunar environment will be investigated by William Farrell, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. William Bottke, Southwest Research Institute, will lead the team researching the history of impacts on the Moon. Jack Burns, University of Colorado, will head a group with the interesting goal of exploring the cosmos from the Moon. Finally, Mihaly Horanyi, also of University of Colorado, will take charge of the Colorado Center for Lunar Dust and Atmospheric Studies.

More from the Lunar Science Institute…

Rev Dr Sir John Polkinghorne, physicist and theologian, comes to Scotland on 28 February to give the second of the James Gregory lectures at St Andrews University, a series studying the theme of science and religion.“Science is essentially asking why things happen and of course it’s been very successful in answering that question, but it’s not the only question to ask about what’s going on. You can also ask if there’s any meaning and purpose in what is going and that’s the subject of religion. They’re asking different questions and they’re looking at different types of experience.” says Sir John.“For example, science tends to look at the world and treat it as an ‘it’, as an object; something you can kick around, pull apart and find out what it’s made of – that’s the experimental method, which is science’s great secret weapon. But we also know there is a whole swath of encounters with reality, where we meet it not as an object, as an ‘it’, but as a person. Above all, we encounter God in that way and when we move to that realm, testing has to give way to trusting. If we set traps to see if you are my friend, I’ll destroy the possibility of friendship between us.”More from The Scotsman…