Employees have already pushed away. “People paint waste containers, saying” Antarctica is for everyone “in Rainbow, signatures of E -Mail people [have] Duma additions, [others] Add the preferred pronouns to E -Maili, “says the source.
“There is a sense of anxiety at the station, as if people have never felt before,” they add. “The work still has to do, even though people feel that the next shoes may fall at any time.”
This anxiety extends to their work safety. “At the South Pole there are people who are worried about losing their jobs every day,” says the source with knowledge of Wired. Employees present at the station are not able to physically go to October, and shooting or loss of financing in the middle of the season would be a unique set of challenges.
Sources are also prepared for at least 50 % NSF budget reduction Because of dog cuts. These cuts send scientists from Antarctica with assistants and doctoral students who are looking for. “We didn’t know if we could pay graduates,” says one of the scientist. While research is conducted on the continent, scientists restore their findings to the USA to process and analyze. Many funds also work in science: in the case of one project that requires electricity to run detectors, the scientist “was a paranoid, we would not be able to literally pay bills for the experiment stunned for data.” This has not yet become realized, but when the financing cycles are re -started in the coming weeks and months, scientists are on tents.
Sources inform Wired that Germany, Canada, Spain and China have already begun to exploit this uncertainty, recruiting American scientists focused on Antarctica.
“Foreign countries actively recruit my colleagues, and some have already left,” says one of the Antarctic scientists. “My students are now looking at work abroad … people come [to the US] Doing my whole life. Now people are going the other way. “
“Now there is a great time to see if someone wants to jump to the ship,” says another scientist from Antarctica. “I’m worried about brain drainage of employed scientists or students who have been thrown out.”
“Damage caused by looking [Antarctic] The scientific budget will last a generation, “says another.
Throughout the Doge cuts to the federal government, representatives said that if something needs to be restored, it could be. In some cases, the reversal has already happened: the US Department of Agriculture said this accidentally fired Employees working on preventing the spread of bird flu and try them again.
But in Antarctica, reversal will not necessarily work. “One of the really terrifying things is that if the budget of the Antarctica program is cut off, they quickly reach a point where they can’t even maintain the opening of the station, let alone scientific projects,” says Antarctica. “If the South Pole [station] It is closed, it is almost impossible to restore it. Everything will freeze and will be buried in the snow. And some other country will probably take control immediately.