Do you need a program like GPS or mapping? Basic science support is required

President Donald Trump proposed a 55% reduction in the National Science Foundation’s budget, the nation’s leading source of support for basic scientific research. This proposal focuses on maintaining funding for the development of quantum equipment and artificial intelligence, two areas that are clearly important for our country’s economic future. However, the president’s budget will cripple areas where future economic applications are less obvious. For example, the mathematics and physical science budgets will cut by 67%, or just $1 billion.

By cutting the National Science Foundation’s budget, it would be a tragic mistake to highlight true basic science support, a science where the economic rewards are not currently clear. To see why, consider the history of science behind the global positioning system that many people who are not scientists rely on every day.

Mobile phone GPS tools allow you to map the best routes from one location to another. However, these tools would be of little use without Albert Einstein’s work on relativity. Einstein published his first paper on relativity in 1905. It is unlikely that he knew that his theory of time expansion would allow for the accuracy of the GPS tools he uses every day. Thanks to Einstein, satellite clocks are known to click around 38 microseconds faster than Earth-based clocks per day. If the GPS system does not consider this difference, they are more than six miles apart each day. A week later, they’re over 40 miles away! In short, accurate GPS requires relativistic temporal correction, or direct application of theoretical physics.

Many other discoveries from basic scientific research are also required to make the GPS tool work. A very accurate clock (atomic clock) allows you to measure the time within 10 seconds. The work of physicists Louis Essen and Norman Ramsey brought the first atomic clock in 1949. They won the Nobel Prize 40 years later. Doppler shifts are used to help determine the exact location of the satellite. Physicist Christian Doppler explained the phenomenon in 1842.

It is unlikely that Einstein, Doppler, Essen, or Ramsey could have predicted the confluence of research that brings about the GPS they use today.

Basic scientific research also provided which foundations have been built, including nuclear medicine, modern electronics, and other areas of application that affect our economic well-being and national security. It is not clear whether basic research programs supported by the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies will lead to innovations that will be exposed to the lives of children and grandchildren every day. But we know some will.

We also know from history research and common sense that private industries do not support basic scientific research at a financial level sufficient to bring about widespread advancements that lead to real applications. Industry is (and should) driven by profit motives. They cannot afford to speculate about basic scientific research, at least not large. The National Science Foundation was founded in 1950 to fund basic scientific research that the industry could not afford to undertake.

One way the National Science Foundation supports science is to support young scientists. Graduate and undergraduate students pushing future basic research results into practical innovation. The severe cuts proposed for the Foundation’s budget will undermine our country’s ability to prepare a scientific workforce that requires our country to remain economically competitive and safe from its geopolitical rivals.

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” Various sources believe that the quote is cited to Abraham Lincoln and Peter Drucker. It indicates that we disagree with the origins of this quote. This highlights the uncertainty that we look at the past. It’s even more difficult to see what’s going forward. Today, no one can tell us what practical impact the current research line of basic science will have in the future. By maintaining strong support for basic science through the National Science Foundation, we will not abandon research that will lead to innovation that will change the world for the better in the future.

Susan White is the director of statistical research at the American Institute of Physics. Paul Cottle, a professor of physics at Florida State University, was entrusted to the committee that wrote Florida K-12 scientific standards from 2007 to 2008, and has chaired the American Physics Association’s Board of Education from 2013-2014.