It is always easy to be optimistic at the start of a year, a credit crunch and likelyrecession notwithstanding. In the US, President Barack Obama has nominatedthe Nobel-prize-winning physicist Steven Chu as secretary of the US Departmentof Energy — a move that augurs well in giving science, and physics in particular, aprominent role in the new administration's thinking. In April, the European Space Agency's Planck satellite, which will measure the cosmic microwave background in unprecedented detail, is due to take off, while 2009 will also see space missions to study early galaxies (Herschel), exoplanets (Kepler) and the Earth itself (GOCE).
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