On Friday, President Obama celebrated Darpa, the Defense Department’s premiere research arm, as a hothouse of “cutting-edge ideas to create new jobs, spark new breakthroughs, [and] reinvigorate American manufacturing.” With agency director Regina Dugan at his side, Obama inspected a new armored vehicle — crowdsourced under Darpa’s auspices, and built and designed in just 14 weeks. “Not only could this change the way the government uses your tax dollars,” Obama beamed, “it may save some lives in places like Afghanistan for our soldiers.”

Science in the U.S. is slated for a devastating blow on January 2, 2013 when the debt deal Congress passed last year kicks in, implementing a 9% cut in science funding lasting until 2021. While university infrastructures will be hit hard, the cuts will put a chokehold on research funding, reducing grants and increasing competition for them. Yet, there’s hope. An alternative to federal funding recently launched named Petridish.org, a Kickstarter-esque startup that democratizes science funding by crowdsourcing it, providing a platform for researchers to pitch their science proposals directly to the public and allowing users to make scientific history by backing them. But is the public ready to engage science research so directly? I had a chance to chat with Matt Salzberg, Founder and CEO of Petridish, to find out.

“Petridish is building an audience of people who like science,” says Matt. “And it’s a really big draw to say, ‘I helped make this discovery happen.’ It seems so logical for something like this to exist.”

Cognitive Computing, The 100-Year Starship Study (I keynoted at DARPA’s Symposium for this a couple months back), The World’s Fastest Airplane, Battery-Powered Human Exoskeleton, Insect Cyborgs, Synthetic Blood, Flying Submarine, Mind-Controlled Prosthetic Limbs, Flying Armored Car.

“For most of its history, science has always been done by individual or at best a small group of scientists. World War II changed that: during the war, government-sponsored laboratories employing thousands of scientists sprung up to do large-scale research on weapons and technology. Since then, scientific research has entered a new era dubbed "Big Science”.

Whether “big” science is any better than “small” science is a matter of controversy. Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory Alvin Weinberg (who coined the term “Big Science” in the 1960s) defended the organization and big-budget financing of Big Science as the only way to continue research into progressively more complex scientific matters. On the other hand, science historian Paul Forman posited that defense-related funding by the government shifted the focus in physics from basic to applied research.

Whatever the answer, Big Science is here to stay. So let’s take a look at some of the biggest Big Science projects in the World:“

(click the link to read full descriptions of the list below)

1. The Manhatten Project
2. Space Race
3. Human Genome Project
4. International Space Station
5. Hubble Space Telescope
6. Super K
7. Superconducting Super Collider
8. Very Large Array
9. National Ignition Facility
10. Large Hadron Collider