March for Science

The federation of Spanish scientific societies (COSCE) is promoting the “Manifest for Science 2017“, asking for  a coherent and permanent impulse to Science in Spain. The document can be signed on-line. This initiative is coincident with the global “March for Science” organized worldwide last April, 22, and near simultaneous with the discussion of the Spanish national budget, where scientific funding will decrease (again) by ca. 2.64% in 2017 according to COSCE. The funding cuts in Science accumulate more than 30% in recent years. Choose your option: 1) There is no future for Science in Spain; 2) We are so smart that we can work without budget. 3) No problem because we have very good football teams.

You can see below a picture of our lab taken from a satellite:

And a picture of Madrid’s “March for Science”:

Expansion expanding

The expansion rate of the Universe seems to be 5-9% faster than expected, according to new data from the space telescope Hubble which give an improved value of the Hubble constant. The report is published in Astrophysical Journal. However, this new value is in conflict with measurements of the microwave background radiation using the NASA Wilkinson MW probe and ESA Planck satellite. There are no explanations yet. According to leading scientist Adam Reiss “This surprising finding may be an important clue to understanding those mysterious parts of the Universe that make up 95 percent of everything and don’t emit light, such as dark energy, dark matter, and dark radiation”. I cannot avoid thinking that this looks like the ether hypothesis in the XIX century …