On a hot summer's morning in July, Robert Oppenheimer stood in a control bunker in New Mexico and watched the results of his Manhattan Project burn the desert sand, transforming it into a mild but lightly radioactive green glass. Years later, when asked what went through his head when he saw that great grey cloud rise out of the sand, he said he was reminded of Hindu Scripture, the line from Vishnu: 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds'. Although, according to his brother, what he actually said after seeing the bomb explode was: 'I guess it worked'. As romantic as the potential of science can be, there is also a banality to the discoveries and inventions that shape our world. It is irrefutable that the atomic bomb changed the trajectory of the 20th century, ending the Second World War and fuelling the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, and their proxies.

President Trump Monday proposed cutting federal research spending--except in key areas including artificial intelligence and quantum technologies. Trump's budget for the fiscal year beginning October 1 proposes spending $142.2 billion in research and development, 9 percent less than in the current year. The White House says its proposal is 6 percent more than it requested last year. The budget request is something of a gambler's approach to funding American innovation, betting big in select areas. "I find it disappointing and concerning that funding for basic research is down," says Martijn Rasser, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a policy think tank in Washington, DC. "We just don't know where the next breakthroughs will come from."