A few days ago Austria’s minister for science and research Johannes Hahn has had the bright idea of optimizing Austria’s scientific spending by pulling out of CERN, the flagship institution of European fundamental research. In the end, this would save Austria about 16 M€, which is approximately the amount of money out of the national budget supplied to the Austrian public railway system in 4 days, or 2€ tax money per Austrian per year. If you feel hard pressed to follow the soundness of Hahn’s logic, please join me in signing the following petition:
http://sos.teilchen.at/petition/
Let’s hope the world-wide web – an unremarkable CERN spin-off – helps stopping Hahn from commiting this “historic blunder” as some have called it, and let’s hope Hahn will never require the services of MedAustron, the medical neutron source, currenlty being built in co-operation with CERN in Wiener Neustadt (50km south of Vienna).
Update: Johannes Hahn has finally retracted his plans to exit CERN. Thanks for your support!
