Unprecedented cuts to the National Science Foundation endanger research that improves economic growth, national security and your life
Look closely at your mobile phone or tablet. Touch-screen technology, speech recognition, digital sound recording and the internet were all developed using funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation.
No matter where you live, NSF-supported research has also made your life safer. Engineering studies have reduced earthquake damage and fatalities through better building design. Improved hurricane and tornado forecasts reflect NSF investment in environmental monitoring and computer modeling of weather. NSF-supported resilience studies reduce risks and losses from wildfires.
Using NSF funding, scientists have done research that amazes, entertains and enthralls. They have drilled through mile-thick ice sheets to understand the past, visited the wreck of the Titanic and captured images of deep space.
NSF investments have made America and American science great. At least 268 Nobel laureates received NSF grants during their careers. The foundation has partnered with agencies across the government since it was created, including those dealing with national security and space exploration. The Federal Reserve estimates that government-supported research from the NSF and other agencies has had a return on investment of 150% to 300% since 1950, meaning for every dollar U.S. taxpayers invested, they got back between $1.50 and $3.
However, that funding is now at risk.
Since January, layoffs, leadership resignations and a massive proposed reorganization have threatened the integrity and mission of the National Science Foundation. Hundreds of research grants have been canceled. The administration's proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2026 would cut NSF's funding by 55%, an unprecedented reduction that would end federal support for science research across a wide range of discipines.
At my own geology lab, I have seen NSF grants catalyze research and the work of dozens of students who have collected data that's now used to reduce risks from earthquakes, floods, landslides, erosion, sea-level rise and melting glaciers.
I have also served on advisory committees and review panels for the NSF over the past 30 years and have seen the value the foundation produces for the American people.
In the 1940s, with the advent of nuclear weapons, the space race and the intensification of the Cold War, American science and engineering expertise became increasingly critical for national defense. At the time, most basic and applied research was done by the military.
Vannevar Bush, an electrical engineer who oversaw military research efforts during World War II, including development of the atomic bomb, had a different idea.
He articulated an expansive scientific vision for the United States in Science: The Endless Frontier. The report was a blueprint for an American research juggernaut grounded in the expertise of university faculty, staff and graduate students.
On May 10, 1950, after five years of debate and compromise, President Harry Truman signed legislation creating the National Science Foundation and putting Bush's vision to work. Since then, the foundation has become the leading funder of basic research in the United States.
NSF's mandate, then as now, was to support basic research and spread funding for science across all 50 states. Expanding America's scientific workforce was and remains integral to American prosperity. By 1952, the foundation was awarding merit fellowships to graduate and postdoctoral scientists from every state.
There were compromises. Control of NSF rested with presidential appointees, disappointing Bush. He wanted scientists in charge to avoid political interference with the foundation's research agenda.
Today, American tax dollars supporting science go to every state in the union.
The states with the most NSF grants awarded between 2011 and 2024 include several that voted Republican in the 2024 election – Texas, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania – and several that voted Democratic, including Massachusetts, New York, Virginia and Colorado.
More than 1,800 public and private institutions, scattered across all 50 states, receive NSF funding. The grants pay the salaries of staff, faculty and students, boosting local employment and supporting college towns and cities. For states with major research universities, those grants add up to hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Even states with few universities each see tens of millions of dollars for research.
As NSF grant recipients purchase lab supplies and services, those dollars support regional and national economies.
When NSF budgets are cut and grants are terminated or never awarded, the harm trickles down and communities suffer. Initial NSF funding cuts are already rippling across the country, affecting both national and local economies in red, blue and purple states alike.
An analysis of a February 2025 proposal that would cut about US$5.5 billion from National Institutes of Health grants estimated the ripple effect through college towns and supply chains would cost $6.1 billion in GDP, or total national productivity, and over 46,000 jobs.
America's scientific research and training enterprise has enjoyed bipartisan support for decades. Yet, as NSF celebrates its 75th birthday, the future of American science is in doubt. Funding is increasingly uncertain, and politics is driving decisions, as Bush feared 80 years ago.
A list of grants terminated by the Trump administration, collected both from government websites and scientists themselves, shows that by early May 2025, NSF had stopped funding more than 1,400 existing grants, totaling over a billion dollars of support for research, research training and education.
Most terminated grants focused on education – the core of science, technology and engineering workforce development critical for supplying highly skilled workers to American companies. For example, NSF provided 1,000 fewer graduate student fellowships in 2025 than in the decade before − a 50% drop in support for America's best science students.
American scientists are responding to NSF's downsizing in diverse ways. Some are pushing back by challenging grant terminations. Others are preparing to leave science or academia. Some are likely to move abroad, taking offers from other nations to recruit American experts. Science organizations and six prior heads of the NSF are calling on Congress to step up and maintain funding for science research and workforce development.
If these losses continue, the next generation of American scientists will be fewer in number and less well prepared to address the needs of a population facing the threat of more extreme weather, future pandemics and the limits to growth imposed by finite natural resources and other planetary limits.
Investing in science and engineering is an investment in America. Diminishing NSF and the science it supports will hurt the American economy and the lives of all Americans.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Paul Bierman, University of Vermont
Read more:
Hurricane forecasts are more accurate than ever – NOAA funding cuts could change that, with a busy storm season coming
Basic research advances science, and can also have broader impacts on modern society
Cutting funding for science can have consequences for the economy, US technological competitiveness
Paul Bierman receives funding from the National Science Foundation.
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The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
A judge just took Trump to task for his attack on science
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This is not the first time in American history that the scientific enterprise has been used as a political football. Indeed, as a 2017 article in Scientific American notes, 'The reality is that engaging in scientific research is a social activity and an inherently political one.' Scientific projects, like World War II's Manhattan Project, which led to the atomic bomb, and the massive investment in science after Russia launched the first satellite into space, have been fueled by political goals. Moreover, the work of scientists on subjects like global warming can easily get caught up in partisan contests. Critics worry that the scientific enterprise will be tainted by the political agendas of those who supply funding and help drum up public support for the work scientists do. Those worries reached a fever pitch following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Science skepticism spiked as resentment grew over such polices as universal masking and school closures. Although polls show that trust in science has rebounded, a substantial portion of the population remains doubtful that scientific research is sound and helpful in making public policy decisions. Enter the Trump administration. As The Atlantic's Adam Serwer observes, 'The Trump administration has launched a comprehensive attack on knowledge itself, a war against culture, history, and science.' But it has done so by using a skillful kind of double-speak. The president's executive order puts the administration on the side of 'restoring a gold standard for science,' and guarantees that scientific research is 'transparent, rigorous, and impactful.' At the same time, Trump has cut science funding to 'its lowest level in decades.' The administration has taken a meat ax to research budgets everywhere, including the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, to say nothing about what it has done to research funding at universities like Columbia and Harvard. 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Americans should not be blind to why the Trump administration is targeting science and what its consequences will be for all of us. As Serwer puts it, the president and his allies believe that the kind of 'truth-seeking' that goes on in scientific laboratories all over the country 'imperils their hold on power.' But whatever its motivation, the president's assault on science will leave us sicker, less prosperous, and more vulnerable to the ravages of nature. It will leave this country weaker and will undermine its position in the world. Put simply, America loses when science loses. Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.
National Geographic
9 hours ago
- National Geographic
These are the first images from Earth's giant new telescope
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'We are truly entering a new era.' The observatory has a few key components: A giant telescope, called the Simonyi Survey Telescope, is connected to the world's largest and highest resolution digital camera. Rubin's 27-foot primary mirror, paired with a mind-boggling 3,200-megapixel camera, will repeatedly take 30-second exposure images of vast swaths of the sky with unrivaled speed and detail. Each image will cover an area of sky as big as 40 full moons . (Vera Rubin was the GOAT of dark matter) Simonyi Survey Telescope at night, Vera Rubin Observatory, Chile. May 30, 2025. Photograph by Tomás Munita, National Geographic Every three nights for the next 10 years, Rubin will produce a new, ultra-high-definition map of the entire visible southern sky. With this much coverage, scientists hope to create an updated and detailed 'movie' they can use to view how the cosmos changes over time. 'Since we take images of the night sky so quickly and so often, we'll detect millions of changing objects literally every night. We also will combine those images to be able to see incredibly dim galaxies and stars, including galaxies that are billions of light years away,' said Aaron Roodman, program lead for the LSST Camera at Rubin Observatory and Deputy Director for the observatory's construction, at a press conference in early June. 'It has been incredibly exciting to see the Rubin observatory begin to take images. It will enable us to explore galaxies, stars in the Milky Way, objects in the solar system—all in a truly new way.' This image shows another small section of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's total view of the Virgo cluster. Visible are two prominent spiral galaxies (lower right), three merging galaxies (upper right), several groups of distant galaxies, many stars in the Milky Way galaxy and more. Image by NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory The first set of images taken with Rubin's specially-designed digital camera unveils the universe in startling detail. Researchers combined seven hours of observations into a single image which captures the ancient light cast out by the Lagoon Nebula and the Trifid Nebula. These vast clouds of interstellar gas and dust are 4,350 light-years away and 4,000 light-years away from Earth, respectively. Two other photos show the telescope's view of the Virgo Cluster, a mix of nearly 2,000 elliptical and spiral galaxies. Bright stars from our own cosmic neighborhood shine amongst sprawling systems of stars, gas, and dust held together by gravity. Each of the scattered pin-prick dots in the background represents a distant galaxy. Observation Specialist Lukas Eisert at the Control Room of Vera Rubin Observatory, Chile. May 30, 2025. Photograph by Tomás Munita, National Geographic William O'Mullane, deputy project manager specializing in software, looking at images shot at Vera Rubin Observatory, Chile. May 31, 2025. Photograph by Tomás Munita, National Geographic Rubin's images of the Virgo Cluster also show the chaotic jumble of merging galaxies—a process that plays a crucial role in galaxy evolution. (The four biggest mysteries the Vera Rubin Observatory could solve) 'The Virgo cluster images are breathtaking,' Aganze says.'The level of detail, from the large-scale merging galaxies to details in the spiral structure of individual galaxies, more distant galaxies in the background, foreground Milky Way stars, all in one image, is transformative!' The first images shown to the public, Roodman added, 'provide just a taste of Rubin's discovery power.' For the next decade, Rubin will capture millions of astronomical objects each day—or more than 100 every second. 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It's a bright, colorful cloud of gas and dust about 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. What makes it especially striking is the combination of features packed into one place: a glowing pink emission nebula, a cool blue reflection nebula, and dark dust lanes that split it into three sections—hence the name 'Trifid.' Inside, new stars are forming and blasting out strong winds and radiation, carving up the gas around them. It gives us a dramatic glimpse at how massive stars shape their surroundings even as they're being born. Below the Trifid Nebula in this image is the Lagoon Nebula (or Messier 8), another vibrant stellar nursery glowing about 4,000 light-years away. You can actually spot the Lagoon with just a pair of binoculars or a small telescope. At its heart is a cluster of young, massive stars—their intense radiation lights up the surrounding gas and shapes the swirling clouds into intricate patterns. The Lagoon nebula provides scientists with a great place to study the earliest stages of star formation—how giant clouds collapse, how star clusters take shape, and how newborn stars start to reshape their environment. This expansive image of Trifid and Lagoon together exposes an intricate web of dust lanes and star clusters that make this part of the Milky Way come alive with cosmic activity. The exquisite detail in the structure of the nebulosity shown here demonstrates the exceptional quality of Rubin's entire system—from its light-collecting power, to its sensitive camera, to its efficient data transfer and processing system. Over ten years, Rubin Observatory will take millions of images and will image each place in the sky, including this one, about 800 times. Every time we look at the Universe in a new way, we discover new things we never could have predicted—and with Rubin we will see more than we ever have before. The image was captured by Rubin Observatory using the 3200-megapixel LSST Camera—the largest digital camera in the world. We invite you to zoom in and explore the details in this unique image! Image by NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory The concept for the project was conceived roughly 30 years ago to maximize the study of open questions in astronomy with cutting-edge instrumentation. Construction began in 2014 in Chile's Cerro Pachón, at an altitude of 8,900 feet. Originally named the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, it was renamed in 2019 in honor of the American astronomer Vera C. Rubin , whose work provided the first observational evidence of dark matter. When the observatory begins science operations in earnest later in 2025, its instruments will yield a deluge of astronomical data that will be too overwhelming to process manually. (Each night, the observatory will generate around 20 terabytes of data .) So computer algorithms will sift through the large volumes of data, helping researchers flag any patterns or rare events in a particular patch of sky over time. Astronomers expect high-quality observations taken with the telescope will help map out the structure of the universe, find comets and potentially hazardous asteroids in our solar system, and detect exploding stars and black holes in distant galaxies. The Vera Rubin Observatory lit by a patch of light at sunrise. Photograph by Tomás Munita, National Geographic The observatory will also examine the optical counterparts of gravitational wave events—ripples in the fabric of space caused by some of the most energetic processes in the cosmos. By studying these events, astronomers hope to uncover the secrets of the invisible forces that shape the universe like dark matter and dark energy. 'Those first few images really show the results of those 10 years of really hard and meticulous work that the whole team has put into it, ranging from designing, simulating, to assembling, characterizing and calibrating every single part of the observatory, telescope, camera, the data pipeline, everything was really done very meticulously,' said Sandrine Thomas, deputy director of Rubin Observatory and the observatory's telescope and site scientist, at the June press conference. 'I really feel privileged to have worked with such a talented and dedicated multinational team,' Thomas added. 'It's really impressive.'
Forbes
9 hours ago
- Forbes
See The First Jaw-Dropping Space Photos From Humanity's Biggest-Ever Camera
In a moment long-awaited by astronomers, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in the Chilean Andes has today published its first images and time-lapse videos. A combination of a unique telescope and the largest digital camera ever built for astronomy, Rubin will begin a 10-year mission later this year, during which it's expected to discover 10 million supernovas, 20 billion galaxies, and millions of asteroids and comets. Its debut images are being shown live on YouTube today at 11:00 a.m. EDT . This image combines 678 separate images taken by NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in just over ... More seven hours of observing time. Combining many images in this way clearly reveals otherwise faint or invisible details, such as the clouds of gas and dust that comprise the Trifid nebula (top right) and the Lagoon nebula, which are several thousand light-years away from Earth. NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory Its 'first light' collection includes images that showcase its enormous field of view, the dense background of galaxies when zoomed in, and time-lapse videos. They include an image of the Triffid nebula and the the Lagoon nebula that combines 678 separate images in just over seven hours of observing time, as well as panoramas of the Virgo cluster. Later in 2025, the Rubin Observatory will begin the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), which is expected to detect 90% of all potentially hazardous asteroids over 140 meters wide, as well as rogue planets, interstellar comets, and supernovae — exploding stars. Its 8.4-meter Simonyi Survey Telescope's unique three-mirror design gives it a field of view equivalent to seven full moons. Its unmatched étendue — a measure of optical throughput — allows it to collect more wide-field light than any other telescope on Earth. Using a rapid 39-second imaging cycle, its unique camera will produce around 800 images per night and scan the entire southern sky every three to four nights, allowing scientists to track phenomena as they occur over months, days, or even seconds. It will create an evolving, decade-long time-lapse of the cosmos in what is known as time-domain astronomy. At about 20 terabytes every night, the amount of data gathered by Rubin Observatory in just the first year of the LSST will be greater than that collected by all other observatories combined. The facility, named after Vera C. Rubin — the astronomer who confirmed the existence of dark matter in galaxies — aims to continue her legacy by mapping dark matter and probing dark energy. It will also supernova, help model how stars die and study the accelerating expansion of the universe. This image shows another small section of NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory's total view of the ... More Virgo cluster. Visible are two prominent spiral galaxies (lower right), three merging galaxies (upper right), several groups of distant galaxies, many stars in the Milky Way galaxy and more. NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory Funded by the US Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, Rubin will observe from Cerro Pachón, an 8,900-foot (2,700-meter-high) mountain peak accessed from the Elqui Valley near La Serena, Chile, in the foothills of the Andes and in the southern Atacama Desert — one of the driest places on Earth, with the clearest sky. It's far from light pollution and major flight paths. The Southern Hemisphere also offers a clearer view of the Milky Way's center, which is dense with star fields and nebulae, as well as of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way. This image shows a small section of NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory's total view of the Virgo ... More cluster. Bright stars in the Milky Way galaxy shine in the foreground, and many distant galaxies are in the background. NSF-DOE Rubin Virgo cluster 1 Its $168 million LSSTCam imager is about the size of a car, weighs over three tons and captures 3,200-megapixel images — each large enough to fill 378 4K screens. Developed over more than a decade, its suite of six optical filters enables astronomers to peer across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from ultraviolet to near-infrared. It has a 9.6 square-degree field of view. The telescope inside the dome of the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory. NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/H. Stockebrand 'a Taste Of Rubin's Discovery Power' 'Since we take images of the night sky so quickly and so often, we'll detect millions of changing objects literally every night,' said Professor Aaron Roodman, program lead for the LSST Camera at Rubin Observatory and Deputy Director for Rubin construction, in a press briefing. 'We will also combine those images to be able to see incredibly dim galaxies and stars, including galaxies that are billions of light years away. The first images provide just a taste of Rubin's discovery power.' Staff in the control room of the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory celebrate the "first photon" from ... More the sky captured by the Legacy Survey of Space and Time Camera in April 2025. NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/W. O'Mullane It's built for the era of big data and automation, with fiber optics from Cerro Pachón to La Serena enabling Rubin's images to be relayed to supercomputers in California within seconds, where AI-driven systems will compare them with previous captures. If an object's position or brightness has changed, an alert will be issued to the global scientific community within just two minutes. During its 10-year mission, Rubin will generate up to 10 million alerts per night, identifying cosmic events faster than any telescope before. A view of NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory beneath the Milky Way galaxy. NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/H. Stockebrand Beyond 'snapshots' Of The Sky 'What astronomy has given us mostly so far are just snapshots, but the sky and the world aren't static — there are asteroids zipping by and supernovas exploding,' said Dr. Yusra AlSayyad, who oversees image processing at Rubin Observatory, in a press briefing. 'One of the reasons we haven't been able to convert the snapshots of the sky that we've had so far into time-lapse video is that the data management technology technologies simply did not exist 20 years ago to store transfer process and interpret the petabytes of data that this would require.' New cutting-edge automated algorithms will be used to analyze and mine the LSST data set, enabling the expected scientific discoveries. The telescope inside the closed dome of the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory. NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory Why Supernovas Matter Among the Rubin Observatory's many targets, supernovas are perhaps the most scientifically tantalizing. These powerful stellar explosions serve as cosmic lighthouses, helping astronomers measure vast cosmic distances and understand the accelerating expansion of the universe. Supernova data first revealed the presence of dark energy in the 1990s. Rubin is set to take that discovery to the next level. By detecting millions of supernovas — far beyond the handful historically observed in our galaxy — the LSST will refine the timeline of cosmic expansion and offer vital clues to the nature of dark energy. Further Reading Forbes Asteroid Larger Than Golden Gate Bridge Approaches Earth In Rare Event By Jamie Carter Forbes When To See June's 'Strawberry Moon,' The Lowest Full Moon Since 2006 By Jamie Carter Forbes In Photos: Strawberry Moon Skims Horizon In Once-In-A-Generation Event By Jamie Carter
