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The Lay Scientist: A dark winter for UK physics

December 27, 2009 By

Despite widespread financial gloom, 2009 has been an excellent vintage for physics and astronomy. The Hubble Space Telescope‘s final servicing mission was declared a resounding success, LHC finally powered up after last year’s false start, several new astronomy satellites were launched and astronomers have tantalisingly reported a possible first-ever detection of dark matter particles. But in the UK, the year was closed on a blue note following an ominous pre-budget report in early December and the subsequent announcement of drastic cuts to the particle physics and astronomy programmes by the country’s Science and Technology Facilities Council, STFC.

For the sake of spreading the word to a wider community, I wrote a general overview blog post on the Lay Scientist blog about the funding cuts to British physics and astronomy research. Go read it here.

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STFC: The morning after

December 17, 2009 By
JIVE Director looking for an STFC representative

JIVE Director looking for an STFC representative (Image: M. Garrett)

Yesterday’s announcement from the Science and Technology Facilities Council was everything scientists had feared it to be, Britain has announced its withdrawal from over 20 large projects and is slashing 25% of studentships and fellowships. For astronomy some notable names are Gemini, the facilities on La Palma (including the robotic Liverpool Telescope) and UKIRT. In addition, the Dutch community will not be pleased with the news of Britain’s withdrawal from two of its flagship radio astronomy projects, LOFAR and JIVE. I haven’t seen any official responses from the Netherlands but will keep an eye out for those – although Astron Director Mike Garrett’s reaction on twitter was telling:

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Dark days ahead?

December 16, 2009 By

The British astronomy community is bracing itself for bad news due to arrive tomorrow from its funding council, the Science and Technology Facilities Council, or STFC. Since its creation in 2007, STFC appears to have stumbled from one crisis to the next. An announcement will be made by the council tomorrow about deep cuts in the astronomy budget to fill a 70 million pound hole that has resulted from increased contributions to ESA on the one hand, and a debt that needs to be repayed to the government dating back to the merger that created STFC in 2007.

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The Lay Scientist: Scapegoat Science

November 7, 2009 By

The financial crisis of 2008 was heralded as the end of the West’s love affair with free-market capitalism. The combined crashes of banking industry and real estate market should have been the final nail in the coffin for the unbridled power of corporations, who for decades have flaunted all social responsibility in search of profit. Why is it then, as we see the dust slowly settling, that nothing appears to have changed?

Earlier this week I signed up to write some guest posts on another science blog, The Lay Scientist. Edited by Martin Robbins, this blog has some excellent writing around all aspects of science, health, policy, environment, religion and much more. From Twitter I gather that Martin et al got a big nod from The Times this week, so I’m extra chuffed that I get to post there.

So if you want to read the rest of this post, follow the jump! And yes, it does go on to talk about science.

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IAU: The singular future of astronomy

August 18, 2009 By
The Hubble Deep Field

The Hubble Deep Field

For many centuries, astronomy has been a powerful inspirational force driving people to look further, build bigger, go deeper. Indeed, other physical sciences, mathematics and engineering have benefited greatly, and continue to benefit, from astronomical research. At the IAU general assembly I heard many speakers comment on the “Golden Age” of astronomy we currently finding ourselves in. But as one speaker argued, when was astronomy not in a Golden Age? An entire 4-day session at the GA was devoted to the topic “Accelerating the rate of astronomical discovery”, which had some fascinating talks about the way astronomical discoveries are made and how technological changes underpin progress in astronomy.

An important theme running through many talks in the session was the power of the individual in astronomy. The balance between the individual and the crowd has always been a delicate one. Many early scientists faced disbelief or even wrath from peers and society for their discoveries, from Copernicus‘ “heretic” claims of a heliocentric universe to the initial rejection of Saha‘s equation of ionisation equilibrium by the 1920′s scientific establishment. Several talks were love stories to the mavericks whose doggedness, eccentricity and creativity changed the face of astronomy, culminating in Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell‘s wonderful own account of her discovery of the first pulsars in the 1960s.

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