Quest for Dark Energy May Fade to Black

[groovedaddy]

What happens to a dark energy dream deferred?

An ambitious $1.6 billion spacecraft that would investigate the mysterious force that is apparently accelerating the expansion of the universe — and search out planets around other stars, to boot — might have to be postponed for a decade, NASA says, because of cost overruns and mismanagement on a separate project, the James Webb Space Telescope. The news has dismayed many American astronomers, who worry they will wind up playing second fiddle to their European counterparts in what they say is the deepest mystery in the universe.

“How many things can we do in our lifetime that will excite a generation of scientists?” asked Saul Perlmutter, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, who is one of dark energy’s discoverers. There is a sense, he said, “that we’re starting to give up leadership in these important areas in fundamental physics.”

Last summer, after 10 years of debate and interagency wrangling, a prestigious committee from the National Academy of Sciences gave highest priority among big space projects in the coming decade to a satellite telescope that would take precise measure of dark energy, as it is known, and also look for planets beyond our solar system. The proposed project goes by the slightly unwieldy acronym Wfirst, for Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/science/space/04telescope.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha210

[Hydra]

1. "No child left behind, no child left behind....

Oh, really? it wasn't too long ago you were talking about giving children a head start. Head start - left behind, someone's losing ground here."

George Carlin

[Orsino]

2. "Might have to be postponed for a decade..."

...because we budget for killing people, and not for learning shit.