OUR love affair with Einstein is over. This time last year, we were celebrating his legacy as part of World Year of Physics. We couldn’t get enough of black holes, gravity and space-time. Less than two months later, NASA announced that it was postponing most of its “Beyond Einstein” cosmology programmes to help pay for space shuttle flights. It is a decision that could have devastating consequences for our understanding of the cosmos.
NASA’s decision to divert $3.1 billion from its science programme marks a spectacular U-turn. Only last September the agency’s chief, Mike Griffin, vowed not to take “one thin dime” from the science budget to pay for human space flight. Now…
