A Reprieve for Jodrell Bank?

Posted in Politics, Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , on September 4, 2026 by telescoper
The Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank

Three days ago the latest Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Andy Burnham, gave a commitment to rescue Jodrell Bank Observatory from the threat of closure resulting from funding cuts at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

In a previous post about this I wrote

The last time STFC had a financial crisis was in 2009 and e-Merlin might well have been cut then but survived thanks to political intervention at the highest level. I suppose that could happen again, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

It looks like it has indeed happened again. The exact quote from Andy Burnham is:

There must be a way to save Jodrell Bank, and I give a commitment today, at this despatch box, we will find it.

That sounds like an unequivocal commitment, but it raises quite a few questions. One of these is that STFC was actually planning to cut funding to the e-MERLIN project and it is by no means clear that the £2.8 million needed for e-MERLIN will actually be reinstated in the STFC budget. It may transpire that Jodrell Bank Observatory emerges as more of a heritage site than a world-class research facility, which is what it will be if e-MERLIN disappears.

And if £2.8M is found to keep e-MERLIN going without changing the overall STFC budget, then the axe will just fall elsewhere in STFC. Jodrell Bank is a special site with special arguments for keeping it open, but other targets can no doubt be found that are equally excellent from a scientific point of view, but can’t mobilize political forces to mount such a strong defence. This is no way to perform a scientific prioritization exercise. In any case it is important to remember that there are cuts and cancellations elsewhere too; see here for a full list.

I think that there needs to be a complete review of funding across all the UKRI agencies. It is deeply unfair that physics and astronomy have to bear the brunt of cost overruns at facilities which are largely used by researchers in other scientific areas. Surely their funding councils should contribute. I can accept that belts might need to be tightened, but that shouldn’t just apply to STFC.

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Landscape with Rain – Wassily Kandinsky

Posted in Art with tags , , , on September 3, 2026 by telescoper

Landschaft mit Regen by Wassily Kandinsky (1913; oil on canvas, 70.5cm x 78.4 cm, Guggenheim, New York)

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The Irish National Astronomy Meeting 2026

Posted in Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on September 2, 2026 by telescoper

Today’s the start of this year’s Irish National Astronomy Meeting (INAM), which is being held in Maynooth. There’ll be a series of talks over the next three days covering all areas of astronomy. I’ll be chairing a session tomorrow but will generally popping in and out because I have various other commitments that clash with some of the sessions, but I’ll post updates whenever I can.

To start with, though, let me welcome all the participants who are arriving this morning!

The first talk:

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Has LZ seen a WIMP?

Posted in Bad Statistics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , on September 1, 2026 by telescoper

One of the candidates for the dark matter that seems to pervade the cosmos is a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP, for short). Such particles are hypothetical but, if they exist they could have been produced in large numbers in the early Universe. Among the possible WIMPs are supersymmetric particles, but there are alternative candidates. Whatever their nature it is possible that they could be directed directly in collisions with regular matter but, because they are weakly interacting, the cross-section for such events is low and potentially masked by background events caused by radioactive decays. So far these experiments have drawn a collective blank (and a number of false alarms).

One experiment trying to detect dark matter directly is LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ for short) which is based at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota in the USA but is a collaboration of 30 institutions worldwide, including the the UK, Portugal and South Korea as well as the USA. This experiment tries to detect WIMPs using an ultra-sensitive detector made of 7 tonnes of liquid xenon to hunt for signals of their interactions with atomic nuclei.

Today there was a potentially exciting announcement that LZ may have seen a WIMP, in a preprint with the following abstract:

There is also a scientific presentation by Sam Eriksen from which I have extracted the crucial figure(s):

The event causing the excitement was detected over three years ago, on 16th June 2023. You can see it as the little black dot towards the upper right of the dashed square in the left hand panel. The LZ signal does appear unlikely to have been generated by known background events, but that does not necessarily mean that it is likely to be WIMP. The statistical significance quoted is not sufficiently high for it to be regarded as a clear detection; the implied odds are roughly the same as the odds that you, the reader, have a birthday on 16th June…

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The Strike Ballot

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth, Politics with tags , , , , on September 1, 2026 by telescoper

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that the Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT), of which I am a member, was planning a ballot on industrial action. The reason for the ballot is that the Public Service Agreement, covering pay and working conditions for all public service workers in Ireland, lapsed at the end of June this year (2026) and there is currently no pay settlement for the second half of this year or next year. Salaries have fallen behind inflation under the existing Agreement and some important commitment have not yet been implemented. The Government does not give the impression of being serious about negotiations on these matters.

The ballot opened today, September 1st 2026, and as soon as the link for the electronic vote arrived in my inbox I clicked it and voted ‘YES’, i.e. in favour of industrial action.

Similar ballots are taking place across all the public service unions. Yesterday, it was revealed that Ireland’s largest public sector union, SIPTU, has voted 98% in favour of industrial action. Today it was announced that 96 per cent of the union Fórsa had voted similarly. I hope the IFUT result – and results from the other relevant unions – is as strong.

If it comes to industrial action – which I hope it does not – then such action will be coordinated across the public sector.

P.S. Solidarity to former colleagues at Nottingham University as they take industrial action over job losses resulting from its proposed “restructuring”.

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Back to School….

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth on August 31, 2026 by telescoper

Today has been a Bank Holiday in England and Wales but not here in Ireland; we had our August Bank Holiday at the start of the month of August. In fact this week sees school students of various ages returning to the classroom. That reminded me of this, from a while back:

I had three hours of telecons this afternoon which I decided to do at home, so I left work a little earlier than usual. On my way home I passed a group of boys who were obviously going home after their first day back at school. Their uniforms look very new and in pristine condition. I bet that won’t last!

Three weeks from today, on September 21st, we resume lectures at Maynooth University. We don’t yet know how many students will be taking our various modules but I checked just now and noticed that one or two postgraduate and exchange students have already started enrolling…

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Maynooth University Library Cat Update

Posted in Maynooth with tags , , , on August 31, 2026 by telescoper

I saw Maynooth University Library Cat in a different location today so I thought I’d take the opportunity to share a picture of him with his Library in view.

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Freezing Point, by Anders Bodelsen

Posted in Literature with tags , , , on August 30, 2026 by telescoper

Freezing Point, by Anders Bodelsen was first published in 1969 in Danish with the title Frysepunktet and then in English in 1971. I think it was inspired by the case of Professor James Bedford who, died in 1967 but whose body was medically frozen in the hope he could be revived at some future date. Freezing point is a essentially a work of dystopian science fiction, a genre which doesn’t always last very well but this one was reissued in 2025 because the theme of using cryogenics to avoid death has stayed with us. The book explores some of the deep questions about ageing, death and what life might be like if it went on forever.

The story is centred on a character named Bruno who is a magazine editor. It begins in 1973 when Bruno discovers that he has an incurable cancer. Just after receiving the news he meets a young ballerina, Jenny, and they have an affair. He is offered the chance to be one of the first to be frozen down, the idea being that he would be thawed out again when a cure for his illness is found. He agrees to the procedure and is put to sleep, waking in 1995. He has not physically aged, but the society he wakes up in has changed dramatically. Medical cryogenics is now ubiquitous, and there is a lucrative market in human organs. Doctors effectively rule society, which has become divided between those who opt for “all-life”, which means something approaching immortality, and those who choose “now-life”, where they can live an affluent life as mortals by mortgaging their vital organs. The stability of this society is under constant threat from imbalance of supply and demand. Its regime has become repressive, engaging in mass surveillance and control of access to books and magazines.

In 1995 Bruno finds out that Jenny has been frozen down after suffering a spinal injury that meant she could no longer dance. He also finds out that she had a son, also called Bruno, from their encounter. After struggling to readjust he pleads to be frozen down again so that he can be reunited with Jenny when a cure for her spine is available.

The last part of the book is set in 2022. It is clear that the Brave New World is now falling apart. Repeated freezings and thawings are having drastic side effects on those affected. Jenny’s new spine isn’t working as it was supposed to and even the doctors are showing signs of mental illness, constantly repeating themselves, amid frequent power cuts. In the midst of all this Bruno just wants to die. But will that be allowed?

It’s a bit corny to describe this book as a “chiller” but that’s exactly what it is. The story is told in a dry, impassive voice which makes it all the more bleak, though with enough dark humour for it to qualify as a black comedy.

P.S. Anders Bodelsen passed away in 2021.

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Sonnet No. 49

Posted in Poetry with tags , , , , , on August 30, 2026 by telescoper 
Against that time, if ever that time come,
When I shall see thee frown on my defects,
When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,
Call’d to that audit by advis'd respects;
Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass
And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye,
When love, converted from the thing it was,
Shall reasons find of settled gravity,—
Against that time do I ensconce me here
Within the knowledge of mine own desert,
And this my hand against myself uprear,
To guard the lawful reasons on thy part:
    To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws,
    Since why to love I can allege no cause.

by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

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Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Launch

Posted in Euclid, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on August 29, 2026 by telescoper

Just a quick note to mention that tomorrow sees the launch of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. This is a survey telescope in some respects like ESA’s Euclid but with a larger aperture and different instrumentation, particularly a coronagraph which can block starlight to directly image exoplanets and planet-forming disks. Its larger mirror (2.4m versus 1.2m) will enable it to see fainter objects than Euclid, but its survey will be a much smaller fraction of the sky so in its cosmological applications it is complementary to Euclid rather than a direct competitor for it.

NASA have produced this sort of “cheat sheet” comparing the two observatories:

The Launch is due tomorrow (August 30 2026), at 7:26 am EDT which is 12.26 local Irish Time (same as BST). If you’re so inclined you can watch the launch on YooToob here:

Update: all seems to be well, and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is now on its way to L2.

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