A very interesting comment about research in the US and the EU:
""" I agree but to give a longer explanation i think we can safely say that European Universities and other EU based institutions (CERN, ESA with PLANCK) and so many other top projects in Europe have gained an incredible strong global reputation the last decade or so on leading and accurate fundamental science (like it actually was in the early days of Albert Einstein and the many other top European researchers) while the US has been unfortunately heavily on the decline on accurate high level research and funding.