40th Anniversary of the First Manned Moon Landing - Today’s Scientists Point to New Frontiers
The fuzzy black and white photo is from an automatic video camera that recorded Neil Armstrong coming down the ladder and taking his first step on the moon. A few minutes later, Neil Armstrong photographed Buzz as he became the second human to walk on the moon’s surface. (NASA)
Forty years ago, on July 20, 1969, the United States achieved an historic first when Apollo 11 Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to land on the moon. Armstrong’s now famous words, “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” fulfilled the challenge set out nearly a decade earlier by President John F. Kennedy to land a man on the moon.
America’s race to the moon also launched a generation of scientists. They were inspired by a sense of patriotism and the wonders of space and enabled by the country’s newfound commitment to science following the Soviets’ successful launch of the Sputnik satellite. The new R&D enterprise, built to support America’s scientific ambitions and based largely on federally-funded research conducted at universities across the country, has had a remarkable effect on society and the economy. It has produced innovations in health, technology, energy, security, and defense. It has helped fuel the nation’s economic growth. And, it has educated and trained new generations of scientists, engineers and doctors.
In anticipation of the anniversary of the first moon walk, The Science Coalition asked university researchers across the country to reflect on that event and share their thoughts about the next frontiers in science and what America must do to ensure that these scientific frontiers are reached. While each response is unique and reflective of the background of the respondent, together they make clear that there are many exciting new horizons in science. Research in such areas as energy and climate change, curing human disease, understanding the human genome, and answering questions about the Universe are, indeed, leading us to new frontiers. (more…)
What is Good Science?
Scientific knowledge is important in today’s knowledge society. Research is the guarantor of the quality of knowledge, though it is often not clear how scientific research guarantees the reliability of knowledge. How different can scientific ideals be, and how alike are they despite everything? In her dissertation, the historian of ideas Rangnar Nilsson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, examines what fits within the frames of the domains of authorised scientific knowledge.
The author of the dissertation has compared the way researchers in three different disciplines describe and assess quality within their own disciplines. The disciplines studied are political science, literature studies and physics. The aim is to investigate how the internal view on the quality and legitimacy of research and science varies within the research communities and how it can be linked to different conditions of the scientific activity. (more…)
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