It has been said that the world of science is as brutal as the world of politics. The pressure to publish in high-impact journals is intense, the competition to establish supremacy is cut-throat, the battle for research funding is fierce, and the clash of competing ideas in the public arena of “science” can destroy careers, lives, and even entire research institutions.
As we previously noted, there is strong political will to involve developing countries in space research. In July 2017, the nations of Ghana, Mongolia, and Bangladesh successfully launched their countries’ first satellites into low earth orbit. Each satellite is a small device known as a CubeSat, which allows researchers to place powerful scientific tools into Earth’s orbit at a low cost.
While the attention of the general public is often drawn to new and exciting scientific findings that are reported in the media, scientists are more interested in the long-term impact of published findings. Since its launch in 2004, Google Scholar has provided the general public with a searchable index of peer-reviewed research for accessing notable studies.
By now, nearly everyone is aware of the ongoing debate regarding whether climate change, which naturally goes through cycles of higher and lower average global temperature, is being accelerated by human activity, referred to as "global warming". What is perhaps less commonly understood is why carbon dioxide is the primary culprit blamed for global warming and why it is a greenhouse gas to begin with.
