When will Chinese research pull ahead of the U.S.’s?
  • Llituro [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    16·
    2 months ago

    when? it already has in a lot of ways. this isn’t even new necessarily. a decade ago they had already built and operated the best dark matter direct detection experiment of the generation (PandaX-II) and left both the european and american projects in the dust. and that’s in a niche branch of basic physics research.

    • Llituro [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      15·
      2 months ago

      so to me, the interesting question isn’t “when will chinese research pull ahead of the u.s.?” a much more interesting question to me is when do we hit the tipping point where chinese universities become the global center of what is cutting-edge, the place where all aspiring scientists and academics desire to work so that they can get funding and work with all the most brilliant colleagues. in the second half of the twentieth century it was the u.s. and i’m willing to bet that if this trend continues, which it obviously will, by the mid-21st century china will have fully taken on the role as “home of the scientific golden age”