This “shitty WordPress blog” (to use someone’s memorable phrase) has been going for over 17 years now. I have occasionally thought about breaking the habit but having gone this far I think I might as well keep going until I retire, by which time in it will have reached the grand old age of 20.
In recent years the traffic here has settled down to a level about 40% lower than it was in its heyday. There are about 2,000 people recceiving posts by email and a few hundred who read it on the fediverse; these are not counted in the web traffic statistics unless they click through to the website.
The most popular year ever for web traffic was 2012, in which In The Dark attracted 464k visitors, whereas for the last few years it has been more like 260k per annum. Part of the reason for the drop will have been my move to Ireland and not posting so much of relevance to people in the UK, which was my main audience. I prefer not to think that the decline is because I’m now older and my posts more boring, but that may well the case. Twitter used to be the source of a considerable number of clicks too, but the changes introduced by Elon Musk put a stop to that even before I left that platform. In any case the blog numbers are far higher than I thought I would attract when I started blogging way back in 2008.
Anyway, I have noticed that in recent weeks the levels of traffic have been closer to those of a decade or more ago, with several notifications like this popping up:
In the first two weeks of February, for example, there have been over 30k views, i.e. over 2000 per day. The drivers of this increase have been two posts about the STFC funding crisis, first mine at the end of January and then a Guest Post by George Efstathiou which has been shared very widely.
I suppose the recent increase in traffic is a new manifestation of the old adage that “bad news sells newspapers”…
The following guest post by George Efstathiou is a response to the current STFC funding crisis I blogged about here, and specifically to a letter by the Executive Chair of STFC, Professor Michele Dougherty. I include the letter here for completeness:
George’s post follows:
–o–
I am glad that Michele Dougherty has finally communicated the position of STFC to the community. There is a glaring inconsistency between paragraphs 2 and 4 of her letter.
I have just finished a 5 year term on the STFC Science Board and now that the problems are in the public domain I am able to speak freely. In brief, the financial problems at STFC have arisen because of high inflation and high costs of energy against the backdrop of long term flat cash settlements. The national labs/facilities are particularly vulnerable to both. In addition, the labs invested heavily in ambitious upgrades that are now acknowldeged to be unsustainable. However, it is difficult to downsize programmes at the facilities quickly because it takes time to cut staff levels. In fact, money needs to be spent up front to achieve long term reductions in staff levels. From my time on Science Board, I can see no solution given the SR settlement other than for PPAN to take a big cut. Asking for more money from UKRI will likely fall on deaf ears, since the STFC problems are (to a large extent) of their own making.
The problem, as I see it, is whether it is possible for STFC to construct a recovery programme for PPAN science. The impression given in the Dougherty letter is that the ‘bucket’ allocation formula constrains STFC and so they are forced to reduce PPAN expenditure (Bucket 1) at the expense of ‘outcome driven’ growth related expenditure (Bucket 2) which goes mostly to the government labs/facilities. Science board was told that the new allocation formula was to blame for the huge cuts in the PPAN programme. Furthermore, the STFC plan to shift towards ‘growth related’ priorities is envisaged by STFC to lead to a long term cut in PPAN science. This situation was described to Science Board as the ‘new normal’. This is clearly inconsistent with paragraph 2 in Dougherty’s letter, which states that ‘curiosity-driven research will be the largest component of UKRI’s portfolio across the SR period, with substantial investment and annual increases in funding for applicant-led research’.
I discussed this contradiction with Paul Nurse, who told me that Patric Vallance had assured him that funding for basic research would not be cut under the new funding model. This prompted me to write to Michele Dougherty and Grahame Blair asking for clarification on the interpretation of the new funding model by STFC. I did not receive a reply.
This is what I think is going on. I believe that it is the STFC Executive Board that has decided to prioritise the facilities ahead of the PPAN programme. This is their decision and is not forced on them by the new allocation formula. I also believe that the their priorities are a reflection of conflicts of interest in the governance structure of STFC. Decisions at STFC are made by the Executive Board (EB) which is composed mostly of lab/facility directors and senior programme managers. The Council and Science Boards are advisory. The EB is therefore heavily biased in favour of the facilities component of the STFC portfolio. This bias has afflicted STFC since it was first created. I wrote to Michele Dougherty last July concerning the governance structure at STFC. I did not get a reply.
The situation for PPAN science is very serious and I objected to Science Board being used to conduct a ‘prioritisation’ exercise. At these high levels of cuts, decisions depend on many programmatic factors that Science Board cannot judge. Large cuts to key PPAN projects will surely raise questions of whether the UK should continue to pay international subscriptions. In addition, the UK Space Agency is being absorbed into DSIT and there is uncertainty concerning the relationship between UKSA and STFC. We also have the absurd spectacle of deep cuts to PPAN projects running alongside a call for white papers on future space missions.
I would urge the community to ask questions of STFC. It is important, in particular, to extract an answer from Michele Dougherty to the question of ‘how much freedom does STFC have to distribute funds between the three buckets?’. This is pertinent to the issue of whether STFC can construct a recovery plan for PPAN science. I also think that it is worth pursuing questions on the governance of STFC, which are at the heart of the problems.
George Efstathiou FRS Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics (1909) Kavli Institute for Cosmology Madingley Road Cambridge
I only have time for a quick post today but I think it’s important to comment on the very feeble open letter circulated (yesterday) to “the research and innovation community” by the Chief Executioner Executive of UKRI. I think it’s feeble because it seems to have been intended to clarify what is going on, but does nothing of the sort. In fact, to me, it reads like it was written by someone who doesn’t know what he is doing and is playing for time by waffling.
The letter basically tells researchers working in areas outside the STFC remit (i.e. in anything except particle physics, astronomy and nuclear physics) not to worry because it’s only STFC that will suffer. This is the “explanation”:
In order to remain sustainable, STFC must make significant cumulative savings: a decrease of £162 million relative to our forecasts for their operational costs. The £162 million is the total net reduction in STFC’s annual costs that they must achieve by the end of the 2029 and 2030 financial year. It is not a £162 million saving in each year of the current SR period. Instead, STFC needs to reshape its cost base over the whole SR period so that their budget is balanced by 2029 and 2030 and key facilities are funded properly and sustainably.
That is not the situation at other councils and we do not anticipate equivalent measures will be necessary outside of STFC.
One of the problems with this logic is that a huge slice of STFC’s budget is spent on facilities that support science outside STFC’s scientific remit. The Diamond Light Source, for example, which has annual running costs of almost £70 million caters largely to the EPSRC and BBSRC communities. It makes no sense to me to require particle physics, astronomy and nuclear physics reseachers to bear the entire consequences of cost overruns at this facility when other communities benefit from it.
I’m sure the UKRI Chief Executive knows this, so it must have been a deliberate decision to wield the axe in this way. In other words it’s a conscious downgrade of particle physics, astronomy and nuclear physics. In the new regime, these are less important than any other branch of scientific research.
I’m out of it now, but I always felt that STFC should never have been set up as a research council. It should have been a service organisation, as its title – the Science and Technology Facilities Council – suggests. When STFC was created, back in 2007, funding for particle physics, astronomy and nuclear physics research as opposed to facilities should have been administered by EPSRC. Whether intentionally or not, the current arrangements make these areas of fundamental physics exceptionally vulnerable. We saw the consequences of that back in 2007/8 and it is happening again.
I started doing this blog back in 2008 and over the subsequent couple of years wrote many posts about a funding crisis affecting the Science and Technology Facilities Council, the UK funding agency that covers particle physics and astronomy research that had been created in 2007. I particularly remember the cancellation of the experiment Clover back in 2009 which had devastating and demoralising consequences for staff at Cardiff (where I was working at the time). It looks like a return to the Bad Old Days.
I moved from the UK eight years ago and haven’t really kept up with news related to the science funding situation there so I was very disturbed last night to see a message from the Royal Astronomical Society containing the following:
In a letter from its Executive Chair, Professor Michele Dougherty, the research council indicates that the budget for particle physics, astronomy and nuclear physics together will drop by around 30%. The letter also asks project teams to plan for scenarios where their funding is reduced by 20%, 40% and 60%.
All this is on top of a recent squeeze that has led to grants being delayed to make savings of around 15%. The full letter is here:
Exclusive: Science and Technology Facilities Council seeks £162m cost savings, with existing projects facing axe
The article goes on to point out the dangers of cuts of this scale to physics departments in the UK, many of which have a significant fraction of their activity in astronomy and particle physics.
The additional reduction and prospect of cuts to ongoing projects is likely to be felt as a hammer blow by physics departments in UK universities, of which a quarter are already at risk of closure.
Grim times indeed. It looks to me like the people running UKRI, the umbrella organization for all the UK research councils which has an annual budget of £8bn, have decided to throw STFC under the bus to chase shorter-term economically driven projects and to hell with the long-term funding of basic research. In Ireland we’re familiar with the consequences of that approach.
Still, at least the UK has the Astronomer Royal as an independent voice to speak up against these cuts. The current Astronomer Royal is… checks notes… oh… Michelle Dougherty, Executive Chair of STFC.
The start of this term has been so busy that I forgot that October 1st was the 40th anniversary of the day I officially started as a research student at the University of Sussex (1st October 1985). Reflecting on that event I realized with something approaching horror that 1985 is halfway between 1945 and 2025, so I started my PhD DPhil closer in time to the end of World War 2 than to today. Yikes!
Before travelling to the Sussex to embark on my research degree, I spent a couple of weeks at a summer school for all the new Astronomy PhD students. These are still held annually, although they are now just a week long instead of a fortnight. They are now sponsored by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) but the one I attended was before that came into being, and even before its predecessor, the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research PPARC. The Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) summer school I went to was held at Durham University; we all stayed in St Mary’s College, just over the road from the Physics Department. I remember it well and indeed still have the notes I took during the lectures there.
Another difference in those days was that we got our stipends paid by cheque – every three months, if I remember correctly – directly from the Research Council. Nowadays STFC gives block grants to universities and other research institutions, who then pay the students.
Anyway, here is the summer school conference picture:
Unfortunately (for such a rare and valuable document) it is slightly damaged on the left -hand side. I leave it up to my readers to identify the people in this group who are still in the business 40 years later. I can see quite a few – Moira Jardine, Alan Fitzsimmons, Melvyn Hoare, Jon Loveday and Alastair Edge, among others! A more complete list can be found here.
I don’t think I’m the only member of this group who is thinking of retiring fairly soon. This post was occasioned by the 40th anniversary of the start of my DPhil; my plan is to retire 40 years after the date of the completion of my thesis. That’s less than three years from now…
"What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. "
from Little Gidding V, Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot
As before, entries to the Research Image Competition were divided into two Themes: Theme 1 (Particle and Nuclear Physics) and Theme 2 (Astronomy, Cosmology and Solar & Planetary Science) and scores were allocated by the judges based on visual impact and scientific interest. Once again, the standard was very high, but there were clear winners in each category. Here they are:
LUCA REALI, MAX BOLEININGER, DANIEL MASON, SERGEI DUDAREV (UKAEA)
DATA INTENSIVE CAMBRIDGE
Molecular dynamics simulations of high-dose radiation damage in tungsten to understand the evolution of the material under fusion reactor conditions. Blue spheres are vacancies (missing-atom defects), orange spheres are interstitials (extra-atom defects). Lines are dislocations (linear crystallographic defect).
Softwares: LAMMPS for simulations, Ovito for the rendering.
JOSH BORROW, FLAMINGO TEAM
MEMORY INTENSIVE DURHAM
The most massive galaxy cluster in the flagship, 2.8 Gpc, FLAMINGO volume, with each side of the image spanning 40 megaparsecs. Each colour represents a different gas density contour, highlighting the extremely complex spatial and velocity structure of the gas within the cluster. At the center, the gas serendipitously aligns to produce a love heart.
The image was created with DiRAC supported software SWIFT and swiftsimio.
For more details about these images and the other entries see here. The 2024 Dirac Calendar features a selection of the entries.
Congratulations to the winners and indeed all the entrants!
Apparently I still have a few readers in the UK, so I thought I’d share a bit of news aimed at them.
It seems the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee of the House of Commons has initiated an inquiry into ” how well placed the UK astronomy sector is to showcase the UK as a science superpower and maximise its leadership in international programmes”. Apparently this will examine the status of the UK’s astronomical research base and assets, UK access to international astronomical facilities and contribution to international programmes. It will also explore astronomy’s potential contribution to the UK economy and what considerations should inform the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s next Strategic Delivery Plan, due in 2026.
I don’t know why STFC doesn’t just use ChatGPT to write its strategic plan like everyone else, but there you go.
Anyway, the Committee welcomes submissions addressing any or all of the following:
The strengths and weaknesses of UK astronomy and how these compare to other nations
The opportunities and challenges facing UK astronomy and whether it is receiving sufficient support
What the aims and focus of UK astronomy should be
The extent to which UK astronomy contributes to the UK’s status as a science superpower
Whether the UK is maximising the contribution that astronomy can make to the wider UK economy
What role astronomy is playing in encouraging greater diversity and inclusion in STEM and public interest in science
To find out more information and/or submit a submission go here. The deadline is 27th October.
I stumbled by accident yesterday on a bit of news relating to UK Astronomy Grant funding via the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). I am of course completely out of that system, and have been for years, but I am nevertheless quite nosy so was interested to find out about the changes. Thanks to Alan Heavens and Paul Crowther for enlightening me.
Way back in 2010 I wrote in somewhat critical terms about the new-style Consolidated Grants that STFC was planning to introduce. This system replaced a dual approach of so-called “Standard Grants” – which were typically rather small, usually funding one postdoctoral researcher and bits and bobs – and “Rolling Grants” – which were usually larger, covering all the activities of a department or institution – with a single system of “Consolidated Grants”. The Standard Grants were “responsive”, in that investigators could put in an application whenever they wanted, whereas Rolling Grants were on a fixed timetable. After the change, the responsive mode went out the window and Departments were forced to apply collectively, once every three years.
Much of the reason for the change was the administrative cost of the system. There were huge numbers of standard grant applications. Back in the mists of time there were two application deadlines per year so it was a heavy burden on the panels and the Swindon office, especially since so little funding was available in the first place. Standard grants were also the first to get squeezed when there was a funding shortfall, whereas Rolling grants generally carried on rolling.
Well, the news is that the current Astronomy grant round, with applications in 2022 and grants starting in 2023, will see the last of these Consolidated Grants. From this year on, there will be a new system of – wait for it – “Small” and “Large” grants, thought these are officially called Type 1 and Type 2. The Small Awards scheme is described here and it looks very much like the old Standard Grant system. Details of the Large grants scheme are not yet available, but I believe they will start next year. You can find more details here (PDF).
So now it seems something very like the old system is returning, and there are no doubt the same worries that Large grants will eat up most of the money, leaving very little for the Small grants. Déjà vu.
DIRAC is a high-performance computing facility designed to serve the research community supported in the UK by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). Recently DIRAC ran a competition to select the best images produced using results obtained by this facility, and I was honoured to be asked to be one of the judges. Entries were divided into two Themes: Theme 1 (Particle and Nuclear Physics) and Theme 2 (Astronomy, Cosmology and Solar & Planetary Science) and scores were allocated by the judges based on visual impact and scientific interest. There were 41 entries altogether, all of a very high standard.
So, without further ado, I shall now show you the winning entries!
The winning image in Theme 1 was submitted by Ed Bennett and Biagio Lucini of Swansea University and called Let it (Wilson) flow. The description supplied by the creators reads:
A space-time slice of the topological charge density distribution of a 128 times 643 lattice field configuration (with periodic boundaries) from an ensemble of the SU(2) gauge theory with two flavours of Dirac fermion in the adjoint representation (also known as Minimal Walking Technicolor). Moving along the time direction from left to right, successive time-slices are also iterated using the gradient flow of the Wilson action, which removes the ultraviolet noise that would otherwise prevent computation of the configuration’s topological charge. This noise is clearly visible on the left, with the actual instantons (orange) and anti-instantons (blue) becoming visible at longer flow times to the right.
Here is the winning image for Theme 1:
Theme 1 winner: Let it (Wilson) flow by Ed Bennett and Biagio Lucini.
The winning entry of Theme 2 is entitled Immediate origin of the Moon as a post-impact satellite and was submitted by Jacob Kegerreis of Durham University who supplied the following description:
The Moon is thought to have formed following a giant impact, but the details are still hotly debated. New high-resolution simulations, like the one shown here, reveal that a Moon-like satellite can be immediately placed into a wide orbit around the Earth, in contrast with the traditional idea of later accretion from a debris disk. This opens up new possibilities for the Moon’s initial orbit and interior, which could help to solve mysteries like its tilted orbit, thin crust, and Earth-like isotopes. The 3D smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations were run using the SWIFT code on the DiRAC COSMA8 system with over 100 times higher resolution than the current standard. The SPH data from this mid-impact snapshot are rendered using Houdini and Redshift, with the colour, opacity, and emission controlled by the particle material, density, and internal energy.
Here is the winning image of Theme 2:
Theme 2 Winner: Immediate origin of the Moon as a post-impact satellite by Jacob Kegerreis
Congratulations to the winners!
It was a lot of fun being one of the judges for this competition and I learnt a lot about the science from the clever way in which many of the entries displayed their results. The field was very strong, and many more images were worthy of recognition, but we were only allowed to pick one winner from each Theme. I am however given to understand that it is planned to include the best of the rest alongside the winners in a 2023 calendar which will be distributed to the DIRAC user community.
The Simons Observatory Site in Chile, as it appeared four years ago
Obviously a couple of years of pandemic have intervened, amongst other things, but I was delighted to read yesterday that the UK has invested £18M in the Simons Observatory, which will enable further development of the facility at Cerro Toco, high above the Atacama Desert in Chile.
Simons Observatory in May 2022
The project was already a large international collaboration led from the USA, but the new funds from UKRI mean that six UK institutions will now join. These are (in alphabetical order): Cambridge; Cardiff; Imperial College London; Manchester; Oxford; and Sussex. Although I’m not involved in this project myself I know many people at these institutions (two of which I have worked at) and elsewhere who will be absolutely thrilled to be able to participate in this exciting project. Congratulations to them!
It would have been great if Ireland had been able to get involved in the Simons Observatory, but sadly fundamental science of this type is not a priority for the powers that be in Irish science funding. This is unfortunate because I think membership of international consortia like this would enable a small country to punch above its weight in science. Still, at least the UK PI, Prof. Michael Brown (Manchester), is an Irishman…
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In the Dark 