{"id":11241,"date":"2021-05-05T16:15:01","date_gmt":"2021-05-05T15:15:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/?p=11241"},"modified":"2021-05-05T16:15:01","modified_gmt":"2021-05-05T15:15:01","slug":"national-science-foundation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/national-science-foundation\/11241\/","title":{"rendered":"National Science Foundation: promoting the progress of science"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u2018Promote the progress of science.\u2019 This mandate from the National Science Foundation Act of 1950, which created the National Science Foundation (NSF), lies at the core of what the NSF Physics Division does.\u00a0 Awards in the Division\u2019s portfolio support the research needed to address a scientific question that is at the frontier of knowledge as it is currently known, while at the same time extending and redefining that frontier. But the Physics Division\u2019s activities go well beyond that. Inherent in the implementation of this portfolio, which includes significant support for students and junior scientists, is the preparation of the next generation of a diverse, advanced, high-tech workforce and the development of innovative new technologies that arise in the quest to answer some of the hardest questions that Nature can pose.<\/p>\n
Support for physics research through the Physics Division covers a broad spectrum of science questions, from seeking to understand the fundamental structure of the Universe, to probing the nature of the fundamental particles that make up this Universe; from elucidating the curious properties of quantum mechanics, to taking advantage of these properties to enable a second quantum revolution; and from understanding the complex behaviour of plasmas, to searching for possible overriding principles governing the behaviour of living systems.<\/p>\n
Because it operates as a single unit within the NSF, the Physics Division is in a unique position to bring together those areas of physics for which the Division has primary responsibility (atomic, molecular, and optical physics; elementary particle physics; particle astrophysics; nuclear physics; gravitational physics; plasma physics; and the physics of living systems) into a concentrated effort that speaks for physics overall and not a specific sub-area of physics. Rather than function entirely independently, the Physics Programme Directors who lead each of these sub-areas function as a team to look for how the special tools and approaches appropriate to a particular sub-area can reinforce each other in addressing the driving scientific questions identified by the community.<\/p>\n
The Physics Division also partners extensively with other parts of the NSF to support research that connects these areas of physics with scientific research outside of physics. These interactions take place regularly on a programme-to-programme level, as well as on an NSF-wide basis.\u00a0 As an example, the Division currently plays a key role in the emphasis areas of Quantum Information Science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) that promise to bring about major changes in how we do science, as well as drive new technologies for the 21st century.<\/p>\n
The National Science Foundation provides the bulk of its research resources to the academic community through making awards or agreements with academic institutions to fund research proposals generated by faculty at these institutions. The Physics Division employs three different funding modes in distributing resources. The predominant mode is funding for individual investigators or small groups for research focused on a specific scientific project.1<\/sup> The second mode is through the Physics Frontiers Centers2<\/sup> programme, which funds large-scale projects where the combined efforts of a larger group of investigators will result in progress above and beyond what could be reached by the individuals working separately. The final mode, support for operations for major facilities, is necessitated by the fact that research in areas such as particle physics, nuclear physics, and gravitational physics can require tools and instrumentation that is of such a scale that it can only be provided through international collaborations.<\/p>\n A look at some of the recent successes and future plans of the Division probably provides the best illustration of the range of the Division\u2019s activities; and serves as an opportunity to point out instances where overlap between sub-areas of physics has enabled or will enable future progress.<\/p>\n Arguably the most earth-shaking news from the Physics Division in the past five years was the announcement in February 2016 of the first ever detection of a gravitational wave, GW150914, by the US National Science Foundation\u2019s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) interferometer.3<\/sup> The Physics Division shoulders the primary responsibility for supporting the LIGO laboratory\u2019s operations, which operates in a fully collaborative mode with the VIRGO observatory in Italy. Numerous detections have followed this first observation. At the conclusion of the third scientific run, the introduction of quantum squeezing into the interferometer increased the frequency of detections to approximately one per week. An upgrade of the interferometer that is presently underway to introduce frequency-dependent squeezing, done in collaboration with researchers from the UK and Australia, promises yet another factor of two in sensitivity.<\/p>\nGravitational waves<\/h3>\n