According to this article at politico, there was an all-hands meeting at NSF today (at least for the engineering directorate) where they were told that there will be staff layoffs of 25-50% over the next two months. This is an absolute catastrophe if it is accurately reported and comes to pass.  NSF is already understaffed.  This goes far beyond anything involving DEI, and is essentially a declaration that the US is planning to abrogate the federal role in supporting science and engineering research.   Moreover, I strongly suspect that if this conversation is being had at NSF, it is likely being had at DOE and NIH. I don't even know how to react to this, beyond encouraging my fellow US citizens to call their representatives and senators and make it clear that this would be an unmitigated disaster. Update: looks like the presidential budget request will be for a 2/3 cut to the NSF.  Congress often goes against such recommendations, but this is certainly an indicator of what the executive branch seems to want.

According to this article at politico, there was an all-hands meeting at NSF today (at least for the engineering directorate) where they were told that there will be staff layoffs of 25-50% over the next two months. This is an absolute catastrophe if it is accurately reported and comes to pass.  NSF is already understaffed.  This goes far beyond anything involving DEI, and is essentially a declaration that the US is planning to abrogate the federal role in supporting science and engineering research.   Moreover, I strongly suspect that if this conversation is being had at NSF, it is likely being had at DOE and NIH. I don't even know how to react to this, beyond encouraging my fellow US citizens to call their representatives and senators and make it clear that this would be an unmitigated disaster.

My post last week clearly stimulated some discussion.  I know people don't come here for political news, but as a professional scientist it's hard to ignore the chaotic present situation, so here are some things to read, before I talk about a fun paper: Science reports on what is happening with NSF.  The short version: As of Friday afternoon, panels are delayed and funds (salary) are still not accessible for NSF postdoctoral fellows.  Here is NPR's take. As of Friday afternoon, there is a new court order that specifically names the agency heads (including the NSF director), saying to disburse already approved funds according to statute.   Update: The NSF is now allowing postdocs and GRF recipients to get paid; they are obeying the new court order.  See here and the FAQ specifically. Looks like on this and a variety of other issues, we will see whether court orders actually compel actions anymore. Now to distract ourselves with dreams of the future, this paper was published in Nature Photonics, measuring radiation pressure exerted by a laser on a 50 nm thick silicon nitride membrane.  The motivation is a grand one:  using laser-powered light sails to propel interstellar probes up to a decent fraction (say 10% or more) of the velocity of light.  It's easy to sketch out the basic idea on a napkin, and it has been considered seriously for decades (see this 1984 paper).  Imagine a reflective sail say 10 m\(^{2}\) and 100 nm thick.  When photons at normal incidence bounce from a reflective surface, they transfer momentum \(2\hbar \omega/c) normal to the surface.  If the reflective surface is very thin and low mass, and you can bounce enough photons off it, you can get decent accelerations.  Part of the appeal is, this is a spacecraft where you effectively keep the engine (the whopping laser) here at home and don't have to carry it with you.  There are braking schemes so that you could try to slow the craft down when it reaches your favorite target system. A laser-powered lightsail (image from CalTech) Of course, actually doing this on a scale where it would be useful faces enormous engineering challenges (beyond building whopping lasers and operating them for years at a time with outstanding collimation and positioning).  Reflection won't be perfect, so there will be heating.  Ideally, you'd want a light sail that passively stabilizes itself in the center of the beam.  In this paper, the investigators implement a clever scheme to measure radiation forces, and they test ideas involving dielectric gratings etched into the sail to generate self-stabilization.   Definitely more fun to think about such futuristic ideas than to read the news. (An old favorite science fiction story of mine is "The Fourth Profession", by Larry Niven.  The imminent arrival of an alien ship at earth is heralded by the appearance of a bright point in the sky, whose emission turns out to be the highly blue-shifted, reflected spectrum of the sun, bouncing off an incoming alien light sail.  The aliens really need humanity to build them a launching laser to get to their next destination.)

My post last week clearly stimulated some discussion.  I know people don't come here for political news, but as a professional scientist it's hard to ignore the chaotic present situation, so here are some things to read, before I talk about a fun paper: Science reports on what is happening with NSF.  The short version: As of Friday afternoon, panels are delayed and funds (salary) are still not accessible for NSF postdoctoral fellows.  Here is NPR's take. As of Friday afternoon, there is a new court order that specifically names the agency heads (including the NSF director), saying to disburse already approved funds according to statute.   Looks like on this and a variety of other issues, we will see whether court orders actually compel actions anymore. Now to distract ourselves with dreams of the future, this paper was published in Nature Photonics, measuring radiation pressure exerted by a laser on a 50 nm thick silicon nitride membrane.  The motivation is a grand one:  using laser-powered light sails to propel interstellar probes up to a decent fraction (say 10% or more) of the velocity of light.  It's easy to sketch out the basic idea on a napkin, and it has been considered seriously for decades (see this 1984 paper).  Imagine a reflective sail say 10 m\(^{2}\) and 100 nm thick.  When photons at normal incidence bounce from a reflective surface, they transfer momentum \(2\hbar \omega/c) normal to the surface.  If the reflective surface is very thin and low mass, and you can bounce enough photons off it, you can get decent accelerations.  Part of the appeal is, this is a spacecraft where you effectively keep the engine (the whopping laser) here at home and don't have to carry it with you.  There are braking schemes so that you could try to slow the craft down when it reaches your favorite target system. A laser-powered lightsail (image from CalTech) Of course, actually doing this on a scale where it would be useful faces enormous engineering challenges (beyond building whopping lasers and operating them for years at a time with outstanding collimation and positioning).  Reflection won't be perfect, so there will be heating.  Ideally, you'd want a light sail that passively stabilizes itself in the center of the beam.  In this paper, the investigators implement a clever scheme to measure radiation forces, and they test ideas involving dielectric gratings etched into the sail to generate self-stabilization.   Definitely more fun to think about such futuristic ideas than to read the news. (An old favorite science fiction story of mine is "The Fourth Profession", by Larry Niven.  The imminent arrival of an alien ship at earth is heralded by the appearance of a bright point in the sky, whose emission turns out to be the highly blue-shifted, reflected spectrum of the sun, bouncing off an incoming alien light sail.  The aliens really need humanity to build them a launching laser to get to their next destination.)

While I've been absolutely buried under deadlines, it's been a crazy week for US science, and things are unlikely to calm down anytime soon.  As I've written before, I largely try to keep my political views off here, since that's not what people want to read from me, and I want to keep the focus on the amazing physics of materials and nanoscale systems.  (Come on, this is just cool - using light to dynamically change the chirality of crystals?  That's really nifty.)    Still, it's hard to be silent, even just limiting the discussion to science-related issues.  Changes of presidential administrations always carry a certain amount of perturbation, as the heads of many federal agencies are executive branch appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president.  That said, the past week was exceptional for multiple reasons, including pulling the US out of the WHO as everyone frets about H5N1 bird flu; a highly disruptive freeze of activity within HHS (lots of negative consequences even if it wraps up quickly); and immediate purging of various agency websites of any programs or language related to DEI, with threatened punishment for employees who don't report their colleagues for insufficient reporting of any continued DEI-related activities. Treating other people with respect, trying to make science (and engineering) welcoming to all, and trying to engage and educate the widest possible population in expanding human knowledge should not be controversial positions.  Saying that we should try to broaden the technical workforce, or that medical trials should involve women and multiple races should not be controversial positions. What I wrote eight years ago is still true.  It is easier to break things than to build things.  Rash steps very often have lingering unintended consequences.   Panic is not helpful.  Doomscrolling is not helpful.  Getting through challenging times requires determination, focus, and commitment to not losing one's principles.   Ok, enough out of me.  Next week (deadlines permitting) I'll be back with some science, because that's what I do.