Jodrell Bank Observatory faces an uncertain future after UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) pulled funding.
The UK's Particle Physics, Astronomy and Nuclear Physics (PPAN) science budget is decreasing by 2.7 percent over four years, which, coupled with increasing costs, means cuts seem inevitable, and the venerable Jodrell Bank could be on the chopping block.
Professor Michele Dougherty, Executive Chair of the Science and Technology Facilities Council, said the situation required "some tough, but necessary, decisions."
One victim of the cuts is e-MERLIN, an array of radio telescopes across England run from Jodrell Bank. It includes the iconic Lovell Telescope, a 250-foot-diameter steerable dish radio telescope.
Royal Astronomical Society President Professor Jim Wild wrote: "This is devastating news for UK astronomy. At a time when technological innovation is crucial to our country's prospects, discarding unique, globally significant observatories threatens both our scientific future and the inspiration of future generations of astronomers."
Other cuts include the withdrawal of future UK funding for the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii and an invitation for the Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network (BiSON), which has spent decades studying the Sun, to apply for funding at 60 percent of previous planning assumptions.
A spokesperson for Jodrell Bank wrote: "While these cuts to e-Merlin's funding are significant, Jodrell Bank remains a major scientific, cultural and economic centre nationally and for the local area. We will be working with colleagues from The University of Manchester and other partners to secure the future of the Lovell Telescope and e-MERLIN."
Macclesfield MP Tim Roca noted that funding for e-MERLIN astronomy was in place until 2028, but that a case would be made "for protecting this world leading scientific institution."
Professor Brian Cox, Professor of Particle Physics at The University of Manchester, posted: "This is the result of many bad legacy decisions taken by UKRI hastily and without proper consultation, overseen by a government department that no longer exists."
UKRI was sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), which was recently scrapped by the UK government and its responsibilities redistributed.
The clock is ticking for alternative sources of funding to be found for Jodrell Bank. As Roca observed, the budget runs until 2028.
The iconic Lovell Telescope will turn 70 next year and has played a key role in Soviet and US space missions over the decades. While the cuts will affect many science programs in the UK and beyond, the symbolism of the iconic Grade I-listed structure facing a possible future as a rusting monument to UK scientific endeavors is something to focus the minds of campaigners.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by pTamok on Thursday July 30, @07:04AM (4 children)
If you ignore the history, the questions to be answered are:
Can it still do useful science?
If so, can it do it more cost-effectively than other ways?
If so, it is worth continuing to fund.
As often happens, the question being asked is: how much is sentiment worth?
I have never actually visited the site, but have driven past it many times. It is an icon of much British scientific endeavour, but one cannot save everything. If more and better science can be done by razing it and using the money for something else, then that is what should be done.
How much sentiment should be funded?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Thursday July 30, @01:20PM (1 child)
My understanding is that it was up for termination when Square Kilometre Array (SKA) comes online. So this is more like "early termination". UK is one of the three host nations for SKA (the others being South Africa and Australia).
Having said that, the funding cuts are pretty drastic and several major UK facilities are under threat of closure. Also UK participation in international programmes e.g. CERN are being reduced or defunded altogether. The arm of UKRI involved, "Science and Technology Facilities Council" (STFC) is seeing a "flat flat" funding profile i.e. cut when inflation is taken into account, backdated by a year. The STFC funds UK astrophysics, particle physics, several subscriptions to large international facilities (e.g. James Webb Space Telescope) and all the large scale domestic facilities like Diamond (an electron synchrotron for creating x rays for medicine and materials research). They already had a round of voluntary redundancies last year, so this year it is likely to be compulsory redundancies with the aim of shedding a significant fraction of the work force.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pTamok on Thursday July 30, @01:57PM
I agree that drastic cuts are being imposed. Regardless of ones position on funding of science, I think that it is a realistic requirement that the funding changes in stable and predictable ways so that projects are not cut off in the middle of their timelines, and students don't have institutions closed down on them. Uncertainty about funding, coupled with rules that allow claw-back of unspent budget are not a prescription for stable research.
Jodrell Bank, the building/facility, is less important that the research that came out of it, and future research. If the building/facility gets 'preserved', the maintenance costs will be horrendous for someone, and I don't think that that is justifiable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03, @08:06AM (1 child)
Just convince the politicians that it's a Bank bailout, and they might be willing to fund a lot more sentiment?
😉
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday August 05, @07:23AM
Looking for the Cynical/Realistic mod...
(Score: 2, Funny) by VLM on Thursday July 30, @03:07PM
UK is discarding its legacy culture and legacy people. This is not a topic of interest to the invaders. I don't see why they should fund it, if its not part of the new UK culture.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday July 30, @04:11PM
My understanding of this is they played budget chicken and lost.
The plan as I see it was to replace the existing infrastructure with a SKA site. They somehow got themselves named as the HQ for SKA, and its unclear to me if they're losing that or not with the closure.
It costs about $1B to build a SKA site. THat means it'll probably end up costing "like $3B" The entire budget for UKRI for the entire nation is only $8B
I think a pretty accurate analogy would be the American superconducting supercollider. "We're going to do this superproject, it'll be expensive but barely perhaps affordable" "Unfortunately we never could have predicted the budget would explode past any reasonable prediction" "well OK we'll not pay one penny and will cancel it" "Uh did not expect you guys to go that hard I guess we're unemployed now". That's a pretty good summary of the SSC and the Jodrell story looks similar from a distance.
Honestly with the pace of technological change they may be better off buying a 10% stake in some other countries SKA program than running their legacy half century old systems. I'm sure they're still doing good work, its just a 10% interest on a newer project might be MORE good work than they'd get at Jodrell.
Essentially, the UK is too small and poor to fund world class research in everything at the same time, so give up on even trying in radio astronomy. RA in the 2020s is for countries that can blow a billion or ten on a superproject. At one time in the past, cutting edge research was affordable by the UK at Jodrell; the cutting edge has moved on to greener pastures and the UK has not.