Theoretical physicist and author of The Edge of Space-Time argues that the current wave of budget cuts to basic science in the UK and US is not just a political problem, but a threat to the future of fundamental research and the health of democratic societies. The book, which grew out of the gap between the public image of physics and the reality of the profession, makes a plea to preserve the kind of big-picture questions that have driven scientists for generations.
The author, a tenured professor at a major US research institution, describes how the daily work of a physicist often involves bureaucratic tasks, such as navigating grant policies, rather than contemplating the mysteries of the universe. The kind of research that can attract funding is limited, and work on questions like the nature of time or the material basis of space is financially out of reach for most physicists. This situation is worsening as both the UK and the US cut basic science budgets.
The book began at a moment of personal transition, shortly after the author received tenure, which in the US historically guarantees permanent employment and freedom to pursue any research interest. Reflecting on the strategic choices made to reach that point, the author acknowledges giving up work on quantum gravity, partly due to racism experienced as a PhD student and partly due to poor job prospects. The author never took a class that deeply explored time, space, and the fundamental nature of space-time, instead learning to calculate and pursue questions broadly agreeable to the physics community, such as the nature of dark matter.
While these questions are important, the author argues that physicists are pushed to the margins by economic and social forces that determine which questions can be pursued with funding. During a five-year stint in US science policy, the author saw that particle physics and cosmology were in trouble, as politicians no longer saw their fundamental importance or their benefit to the capitalist economy or the military. Cultural arguments, such as the value of a civilisation that tries to understand the universe, seemed to have little impact, and the public, struggling with climate change and economic inequality, could not see the relevance of this research.
The author warns that even a single year of funding gaps can cause a haemorrhage of workers who may never return, taking their knowledge with them. Because science works through apprenticeship, if there is no senior instructor to pass on knowledge, money and apprentices alone are not enough. The Edge of Space-Time takes readers through huge questions, such as why a favourite physics experiment foists the structures of quantum physics on us, and whether we will ever know what space-time really is, or if it will always remain a useful mathematical construct for calculating motion in environments where gravity plays a significant role, like near black holes.
The author makes the case that any healthy democracy needs people who live at the edge of what is known and unknown, the keepers of cosmic stories that have fascinated humans for millennia. Like poetry, physics provides a viewpoint on the universe that is part of our ancestral inheritance. Spending time with what feels strange about physics can also help prepare us to better reckon with difficult political questions, especially given the crises we face, including genocides, climate change, and attacks on transgender people. The book is a plea not to let the author be the last of their kind.