Trump administrator plans to cut teams responsible for critical atomic measurement data

According to the coming weeks, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is discussing plans to eliminate the entire team responsible for releasing and maintaining critical atomic energy measurement data as the Trump administration continues to work to reduce the U.S. federal workforce. The data related are based on advanced global scientific research such as semiconductor manufacturing and nuclear fusion.

“We have been told recently that the entire Atomic Spectroscopy team will be fired within weeks unless the federal government’s reorganization plan changes significantly, especially since our work does not consider that there is no legally essential task for the NIST’s mission,” Yuri Ralchenko, the group’s leader, wrote in an email, which was seen through entertainment.

Ralchenko pointed out that atomic spectroscopy has been used to discover many new exoplanets and develop powerful new diagnostic technologies as well as other applications. “Unfortunately, the story of NIST’s atomic spectrum is coming to an end,” he wrote.

Ralchenko responded to Wired’s request for comment, saying he would not allow talking about budget and management issues and forwarded the issues to NIST’s public affairs department. NIST and its parent company, the Ministry of Commerce, did not respond to a request for comment.

Atomic spectral groups study how atoms absorb or emit light, allowing researchers to identify elements present in a given sample. It then collects and updates these calculations in the atomic spectral database, a catalog of industry-leading spectral information and measurements that play a crucial role in fields such as astronomy, astrophysics and medicine. NIST highlighted the importance of databases in a blog post published last week, and Nist said it receives an average of 70,000 search requests per month.

Evgeny Stambulchik, a senior staff research scientist at the Weizmann Academy of Sciences in Israel, said it was “really difficult to overestimate” importance, and he launched a petition to collect signatures from other researchers and the public, who opposed the cuts against the Atomic Mirror Team. The petition currently has more than 1,700 signatures.

Stambulchik, whose specialty is plasma spectroscopy, says atomic spectroscopy is essentially the only tool that can be used to explain long-range objects in space, as observed by the powerful James Webb telescope. He added that it is also the only tool to investigate “the substance at temperatures of tens of thousands of degrees,” such as inside a nuclear fusion reactor.

Another plasma physicist at the U.S. agency demanded that they remain anonymous because they have no right to talk to the media, and he said they use this data every day to build reliable models to design future fusion reactors. “Losing a trusted data source will hinder private convergence companies,” they explained.

American scientists say the data provided by the NIST atomic spectrum cluster is useful to researchers and engineers in multiple fields. “The team provides the foundation of careful and well-planned data such as GPS and lithography,” they said. “It is this rigorous science and engineering that keeps our bridges and our powers alive. It’s not ‘moving quickly and destroying things.'”