Documents / FOIA release
This JPRS translation, dated 1 August 1990, is an article from the Soviet journal Kommunist by Leonid Grishchuk of the Shternberg State Astronomy Institute. In it he argues that basic science needs state support. He notes that lecture audiences ask a lot about flying saucers and space aliens. He goes on to review cosmology, including galaxy structure, cosmic expansion, relic radiation, Fridman's models and inflationary theory. He closes by saying the question of non-Earth civilizations is a topic for another author.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
# Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1990 Document 12 of 16 masses shapes scientific policy. 5. There are serious flaws precisely here. As experience with giving popular lectures indicates, even in an environment of people with higher educations, questions about "'flying saucers," "'space aliens," etc. are most widespread. A segment of the audience believes that basic science studies these things. Another manifestation of the disoriented understanding of science's role and place is the persistent call for its universal conversion to cost-accounting. Here, it must be said that cost-accounting relations in science are needed to some extent, yet they do conceal a threat to basic research. Cost-accounting increases the priority of applied development work, leads to an outflow of capable people and creates a threat to basic work, which does not promise rapid application in the economy. Such an approach could undermine society's intellectual potential. To put it directly, basic science needs and will need state protection and support in a social atmosphere which is favorable toward its development. 6. Under this new situation, we cannot get by with just repeating and illustrating the truth: science is useful. Broad discussion is needed, not only on the problems of effective organization of research and on the moral and social responsibility of scientists, but also, probably, to illuminate the boundaries that have been reached in our understanding of the surrounding world. This was noted at the 19th All-Union Party Conference. There is no shortage of appeals for central publications to set aside more space for the problems of science. However, the matter is at a standstill for the time being. 7. These are the motives which direct me to talk about what the Universe is, as well as about cosmology, the science of the Universe and the subject of my own professional work. I am certain that there is a deep general human interest in its structure, its past and its future. ## 8. What We Know About the Universe 9. For more than 20 centuries, people put the Earth at the center of the universe, surrounding it with immobile stars. The Sun and planets were given a secondary role. It was believed that the Sun revolved in strictly circular orbits around the Earth. It was hard for people to become accustomed to the idea that the Earth is an ordinary planet. 10. The explanation of the motion of the heavenly bodies and even the prediction of new planets in the Solar System was the triumph of the Newtonian theory of gravitation. Later, the study of the stars and star systems followed. The idea that the Sun is an ordinary star
Not linked to a story yet.
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 12 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.