Burton Richter, vencedor do Prêmio Nobel de Física (Physics 1976) (março 22, 1931 - julho 18, 2018) escreveu em 2014;
When I was much younger I was a fan of science fiction books. I have never forgotten the start of one, though I don’t remember the name of the book or its author. It began by saying that high-energy physics’ and optical astronomy’s instruments had gotten so expensive that the fields were no longer funded.
A que livro ou história Richter estava se referindo?
Isso pode esticar um pouco as coisas, mas Bruce Sterling escreveu "The Dead Collider" para A Revista de Fantasia e Ficção Científica em julho de 1994, que foi 25 anos atrás.
SCIENCE magazine, in its editorial post-mortem "The Lessons of the Super Collider," had its own morals to draw. Lesson One: "High energy physics has become too expensive to be defined by national boundaries." Lesson Two: "Just because particle physics asks questions about the fundamental structure of matter does not give it any greater claim on taxpayer dollars than solid-state physics or molecular biology. Proponents of any project must justify the costs in relation to the scientific and social return."
That may indeed be the New Reality for American science funding today, but it was never the justification of the Machine in the Desert. The Machine in the Desert was an absolute vision, about the absolute need to know.
No entanto, não há menção à astronomia nesse artigo ou no referenciado Ciência artigo "As lições do super colisor", e nenhum deles é realmente ficção científica.