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Trump Admin Plans to Cut Team Responsible for Critical Atomic Measurement Data
The team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology publishes measurement data crucial for advanced research in areas like astrophysics, nuclear fusion, and semiconductors.
“We were recently informed that unless there is a major change in the Federal Government reorganization plans, the whole Atomic Spectroscopy Group will be laid off in a few weeks, in particular, since our work is not considered to be statutorily essential for the NIST mission,” Yuri Ralchenko, the group's leader, wrote in the email, which was seen by WIRED.
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The Atomic Spectroscopy Group studies how atoms absorb or emit light, allowing researchers to identify the elements present in a given sample. It then collects and updates those calculations in the Atomic Spectra Database, a catalog of industry-leading spectroscopy information and measurements that plays a crucial role in fields like astronomy, astrophysics, and medicine. In a blog post published last week highlighting the importance of the database, NIST said it receives an average of 70,000 search requests worldwide each month.
It is “really difficult to overestimate” the importance of this data, says Evgeny Stambulchik, a senior staff research scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel who started a petition to gather signatures from other researchers and members of the public who oppose the cuts to the atomic spectroscopy team. The petition currently has over 1,700 signatures.
Stambulchik, whose speciality is plasma spectroscopy, says that atomic spectroscopy is essentially the only tool that can be used to interpret remote objects in space, like those observed by the powerful James Webb telescope. It’s also basically the only tool for investigating “matter at temperatures reaching tens of million degrees,” he adds, such as inside a nuclear fusion reactor.
