AS ALDOUS Huxley said about science, ”the more we know, the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness”. Indeed, while what’s written in the stars is, more often than not, the stuff of mystery to the layperson, this should never deter the march of science – a march that extends to the very edges of the cosmos.

That frontier has expanded, however. Only through highly specialised and complex cosmic trial and error has new light been cast upon the darkness that illuminates even more of the universe than we thought or knew existed. This revelationary discovery, made in 1998 by two separate research teams, has earned three scientists this year’s Nobel prize in physics. The citation for the work of Saul Permutter of the Supernova Cosmology Project, and Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess of the High-z Supernova Search Team, begins: ”For the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe through observations of distant supernovae.” Behind these words is the almost ungraspable reality that not only is the universe growing more rapidly by being pushed apart by an enigmatic force known as ”dark energy”, its final destiny is not one of fire but hard, unyielding ice. That restaurant at the end of the universe might just be a deep-freeze. But there’s still a long, long way to go: as the citation points out, 95 per cent of the universe remains unknown to science.

On a more local plane, we can take particular pride that Professor Schmidt, an astrophysicist at the Australian National University, is a joint US-Australian citizen who moved to Canberra in 1994. He joins the pantheon of Australian scientists who have deservedly won global recognition. Professor Schmidt told  The Age  he was grateful to this country for the opportunity to do his research. ”I really have to thank my lucky stars,” he said, with perhaps a twinkle of irony.

The problem, though, is that luck also has as much to do with availability of public subsidy as it does with making discoveries. This country’s attitude to funding pure science – as distinct from research that is seen to offer almost immediate commercial returns – is still one of political and public ignorance. Indeed, the federal budget for 2011-12 has cut funding for government research activities by 2 per cent; the CSIRO received its first cut in a decade. Scientific research, which is not about the here and now but, rather, from here to eternity, deserves secure support. Smart countries revere good science.

http://www.theage.com.au/

6 October 2011