The scientific community must be almost alone in having grounds for optimism about 2009. Finally, science will be taken seriously again in American politics. Barack Obama's choices of top scientific advisers are impeccable. Physicist Bob Park of the University of Maryland thinks they will lead to "the most influence science has had in the White House since the Eisenhower administration."
Obama seemed initially to be favouring technologists over practising scientists, but any such misgivings were allayed by the nomination of physicist Steven Chu as secretary of energy. Chu is a physics Nobel laureate (he'll be the first to serve in a presidential cabinet), and is still highly active in research. His Nobel-winning work was concerned with how to cool and trap atoms with lasers. But Chu has increasingly focused on issues of energy production and use, in particular advocating "green" sources such as biofuels and solar power.
The department of energy funds an immense amount of research in physics, so Chu's peers are delighted that the hand on the tiller—and the coffers—will be that of a real scientist rather than a political insider. Presently the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, Chu is convinced of the urgent need to tackle climate change and it wouldn't be surprising to see him propose some radical measures. He has demonstrated that the influence a Nobel prize confers can be put to good use.
Obama's science adviser is also an academic and former physicist with a commitment to the issue of climate change. John Holdren of Harvard University is outspoken against industry's resistance to green initiatives and has become a specialist on environmental policy. As director of the Woods Hole Research Centre in Massachusetts, an institute devoted to environmental and ecological science, he is immersed in the fundamental science.
But it will be especially interesting to hear Holdren's advice on nuclear defence policy. Holdren has served as the chair of the US Pugwash committee, the organisation of scientists dedicated to arms control and non-proliferation. In that capacity, Holdren stated that "nuclear weapons must never be used again," and expressed the hope that they will be abolished. He has voiced concerns about the "vested interests" of those who invent, manufacture and deploy nuclear weapons and criticised the lobby that insists that US national security depends on them.
Might this breathe fresh life into ailing international frameworks such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the US has still not ratified? And what will it mean for the proposed deployment of a US-controlled missile defence system in eastern Europe? Many physicists are scornful of the viability of ballistic-missile interception, sceptical of the US system's capability to do what it promises, and unconvinced by the assurances of the Bush administration that the European system would not pose a risk to Russia. They may be wondering if Holdren will now back those views.
Several other members of Obama's science team have received glowing endorsements from their fellows. Jane Lubchenco of Oregon State University, who will head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is a respected ecologist with strong views on marine conservation. She faces an enormous task, and an industry's resistance, in tackling the problem of overfishing. And Holdren's co-chairs on the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology will be Harold Varmus, another Nobel laureate and former director of the National Institutes of Health, and MIT professor and genomics expert Eric Lander. Both have awesome credentials and command immense confidence within the biomedical community. So far, US scientists can't quite believe the new respect they are being shown.
When galaxies collide
There's nothing like astronomy to bring a bit of perspective to world affairs. Few crunches compare to those of colliding galaxies, which squeeze the gas between stars and spark off a frenzy of star formation. Because of the vast distances between stars, galactic merging doesn't send them smashing into one another. Instead, interstellar gas clouds get denser and hotter, and gravity concentrates the tenuous material into new stars.
Galaxies that have merged with others can generally be identified from their irregular, clumpy appearance. A new study using the Hubble space telescope of more than 21,000 galaxies suggests that nearly all of them have undergone such collisions at some point. This implies that "starbursts"—episodes of intense star formation—are caused by collisions rather than, as some think, by internal processes in lone galaxies.
Collisions are rather rare today. But our own Milky Way galaxy is heading for one with the Andromeda galaxy 2m light years away. And other research has shown that the Milky Way is perhaps 50 per cent more massive than previously believed, making the gravitational attraction between the galaxies proportionately stronger. As a result, we're heading on a collision course faster than thought. But there's no need to panic: this crunch won't happen for around 7bn years.
