Via Andrew Jaffe and Not Even Wrong, news that the UK will be withdrawing a massive amount of investment in large physics projects.
A funding crisis at one of the UK’s leading research councils has forced the country to pull out of plans for the International Linear Collider (ILC). The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) says in a report published today that it does not see “a practicable path towards the realization of this facility as currently conceived on a reasonable timescale”. The report also says that the UK will stop investing in high-energy gamma-ray astronomy, withdraw from the Gemini telescopes, and cease all support for ground-based solar-terrestrial physics facilities…
“This is one whole great big bombshell,” says particle physicist John Dainton from the Cockcroft Institute at Liverpool University in the UK, which is involved in planning the ILC. “How can administrators in government departments and the STFC get this so wrong? There must be a reason and incompetence comes to mind. We are furious. You are killing off the exploitation of years of investment.”
Andrew also notes that they will be:
“revisiting the on-going level of investment” in gravitational wave detection, dark matter detection, the Clover CMB experiment and the UKIRT telescope. The UK will pull out of the Isaac Newton Group of telescopes.
Terrible news for particle physics, astrophysics, and solar physics. The ILC is certainly on shaky ground; if countries start dropping out, the LHC might very well be the last particle accelerator at the energy frontier built in our lifetimes.
They’ve already backed out of Gemini:
http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2007/12/dissed.php
This is awful news!!
Perhaps they are taking notes from our own country with regards to their attitude toward science! 🙁
I always wonder…
There are like 10,000,000 millionaires in the world (100,000 of which their wealth is over 30 mil) according to wikipedia, if every one of them donated at least $10,000, thats is at least $100 billion !!
That is more than enough to build the best ILC, and if they donated more, other serious project can be accomplished in particle physics, medicine, hunger problems..etc,
(May be just a collider should be called the people collider, and the 1st nobel prize should be awarded to all the millionnairs who contributed financially!)
It is definitely saddening what happened in the UK, but what I find even more saddening and maddening is the fact that there are super rich countries in this world, namely the gulf (oil) countries, which as far as I know contribute nothing to international physics projects, if such countries invest in major physics programs and projects around the world then shortage of the fund from some country would not affect the project anyway
The apparent offhandedness of the paragraph in the “delivery plan” describing the ILC funding cut is surprising:
That’s it. Two short sentences…
Still, there’s some amusement to be salvaged. I like the assertion that neutrinos “may ultimately account for the very existence of our Universe”, and the gratuitous “We fight terrorism” claim (“Global threats to security” is “an area of societal and economic relevance” addressed by STFC). Well, at least I have something new to tell people when they ask me what I do…
The ILC news is not so big to me as it really is dependent on LHC results. Realistically it would never be built if it was not needed. Its not like anybody anywhere had actually committed any big resources to it. The other stuff is disappointing but seems to be of the same ilk as the shutting down of a lot of physics departments at UK universities. Looks like the physical science in Europe is draining out to the continent – at least viewed from the U.S.
This looks like what that Harvard president said about what was going to happen to US research.
Why don’t they just hit up Dubai for the cash?
🙁 – Bad news, although the UK has suffered from a wealth of riches lately, the fall was inevitable. Looks like I’ll put going back off for another decade.
Quote from the source
“the council will have a budget of £574m in 2007/08, rising to just £651m in 2010/11, which is a shortfall of £80m once inflation is taken into account.”
Looks like a nice little increase to me.
Julianne — no, they haven’t pulled out of Gemini yet — the agreement doesn’t allow them to do that and save money — but they’re looking at how they can do so, or whether UK time can be sold.
A quick search suggests that inflation in the UK is running at approx. 2%. If we assume conservatively an average inflation of 2.5% over the next 3 years, then £574m becomes £618m. How do they arrive at a £80m shortfall if their projected budget is £651m? Am I doing something stupid?
“How do they arrive at a £80m shortfall if their projected budget is £651m? Am I doing something stupid?”
I think it’s a £80m cutback from the previous plan. No idea how inflation comes into it.
The £80m comes about because of a combination of inflation, cost overuns and higher than expected running costs at new facilities such as Diamond and ISIS and them (STFC) screwing up the maths on how paying Universities for the full economic costing of research would work out.
The situation isn’t helped by various bits of governmental interference, my favourite being the pressure to include private money in the bulding of Diamond, which they did, around 14% of the funding came from the private sector. Because of this private money the treasury charged VAT at 17.5% on the entire budget. Great accounting there boys.
As far as I can tell, this only covers particle physics and astrophysics. What are the funding levels for condensed matter physics or other branches doing?
Is it all of physics being cut, or is some of the money from big science going to other physics research projects?
The more I read about this, the more it seems like big physics is getting slashed, but other parts of science are getting a lot more money.
So if the particle physics budget is getting slashed, why should non-particle physics and non-astrophysics people care?
Hektor — many CM/AMO physicists care an extremely great deal about the health of the field of physics in general. And they are also, obviously, not narrow-minded people who lack understanding of how the fields are irreversibly intertwined.
Because of this private money the treasury charged VAT at 17.5% on the entire budget. Great accounting there boys.
That’s almost surreal in its stupidity. Wow.
Almost as as bad as the news itself is the fact that this gives Gregg Easterbrook the basis for another ludicrous rant. Any bets on him blathering on for five or six paragraphs about how smart this move is?
It’s hard to look at the size of their budget, over a billion US dollars I think, and see a short fall when that money is coming from taxes, which people are forced to pay. It seems their are cost overruns and accounting troubles, such as the VAT, that come into play. With that in mind I think there is plenty of money being forcibly taken from the citizens for science.
Come on folks. UK government has made a smart decision. Some might not believe it but governments also make decisions requiring return on investment justification. They simply decided that current level is not justified. Where’s the short fall in return on investment? Two areas. Astronomy – UK has no space science program to speak of (I am talking launching space telescopes of your own designs like the U.S.) and only a small terrestrial astronomy program, both have delivered little of consequence for a long time. Theoretical physics – the crash of string theory is crashing the associated scientific community and the interests from the military and the public. Theoretical physics cannot predict what LHC will find so why invest in ILC? Such is reality from policy makers. The government refused to invest in them anymore.
[“.. LHC might very well be the last particle accelerator at the energy frontier built in our lifetimes.]
Not so fast. The LHC and the people who works on it will decide their own fate. If no new fundamental discoveries are made, LHC will probably be the last. But if not, if the discoveries are big enough, the world will rush to build ILCs like coffee shop.
dark-matter,
Here’s the the thing. The LHC cannot help but make new fundamental discoveries. In essence, there are all sorts of fundamental reasons why it would make no sense whatsoever to see nothing but more confirmation of the standard model at the LHC: if we did, even that would be a new fundamental discovery regarding the nature of the universe.
Also, the “crash of string theory” is nothing but a myth. Furthermore, if the UK is falling behind in delivering Astronomy of consequence, why is the correct answer to cut back? Won’t that just make them fall further behind?
Finally, there’s the spinoff effect: in developing any new scientific instrument, new technologies are developed, technologies that often have interesting and totally unforeseen applications in the business world. Why would the UK not want in on this very juicy pie?
Yeah, well, all our spare cash for the next four years will be going into paying for the Olympics, which are of course already going massively over budget, so fuck knows what they’ll cost by 2012. It’s not just science that’s going to be hit. (Eg, the British Library is facing major cuts.)
Not so fast. The LHC and the people who works on it will decide their own fate. If no new fundamental discoveries are made, LHC will probably be the last. But if not, if the discoveries are big enough, the world will rush to build ILCs like coffee shop.
It seems like this isn’t really something that will be decided by anyone on the LHC, but decided by nature, in a sense– that is, decided by the physical coincidence of whether the next blob of “interesting” physics are below or above 15 TeV (or whatever it is the LHC ceilings at).
Mark, that is a good list of projects/missions that the UK is involved in. I could add the Liverpool Telescope, ESO, SOHO, STEREO, MERLIN, EVN, global VLBI, SKA (the UK will host the global headquarters), ALMA, ELTs. Most of these are international projects as are any large astronomy projects these days.
The issue here is that a year ago particle physics and astronomy existed within PPARC. If a project over-ran then other projects would have to take cuts, but the community had had a say in the original funding decisions. STFC was created this year by combining PPARC and CCLRC. Now the over-run on the operating costs of the Diamond light source (started by CCLRC) is being bailed out by cuts to the particle physics and astronomy communities who had no input into the decision to fund it in the first place. The decisions of science funding in the UK are supposed to be governed by the Haldane principle so this is not government making “decisions requiring return on investment justification” as dark-matter states. This is simply one area of science paying for an accounting mess of another.
Perhaps I should make my points clearer. Of course UK has all kinds of space astronomy programs, but just about all are participating in *someone else* programs. In this mode, you operate as the follower. That means anything you know or discover, the leaders already know. Only leaders set the agenda, gain the tremendous payback of vehicle, launch and operations capabilities. Only leaders get all the details, the complete analysis, the advanced computational facilities, transfer of knowledge to university and industry, not to mention the glory. UK has been a world leader in many things past, and know this very well. But they decided to be not even follower. Don’t mind being left behind in something the UK simply cannot play a leadership role anymore. BTW, the science cut is only one part – UK is also cutting the military, principally the navy, deeply. The days of large British naval power is finished.
[Also, the “crash of string theory” is nothing but a myth.]
Indeed the crash is a myth in the minds of those engaged in it. Always will be a myth. Until the day of budget reckoning come. I wonder if they will treat budget as a myth too.