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Slippage and Slideage

Posted in Science Politics with tags Budget, STFC on July 3, 2009 by telescoper

Back from the week’s exertions I’ve just realised that I missed the announcement from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the changes to their programme as a result of the 2009 budget settlement.

You can find the full statement here, but of immediate concern to astronomers is the plan to cut funding for the Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CASU) and the Wide-Field Astronomy Unit (WFAU) at Edinburgh. I’m not sure how much their support is to be reduced and what the long-term implications of the cuts will be.

Expenditure on the outrageously useless space gizmo Moonlite will be delayed until next year, thus saving another bit of money. In my opinion, it would have been better simply to have cancelled this one altogether and diverted the funding into research grants which are instead to be held at the levels they were cut to last year.

Other savings will be made by “rephasing” (i.e. delaying) other projects in particle and nuclear physics and some others have started late anyway for other reasons.

Any optimism there might have been about a better settlement at the next Comprehensive Spending Review has now totally evaporated, however, and I wouldn’t bet against STFC having to cope with further large cuts (in cash terms) a few years down the line. There are several ongoing consultation exercises (see Andy’s discussion and my earlier post for details) which will no doubt be used to draw up hit lists that will be used to make further cuts if and when needed.

The immediate impact of this review exercise on the astronomy programme seems considerably less brutal than I feared, but what may be going on is simply a holding operation and that the really drastic decisions will happen later, after money has already been spent on projects that are really already doomed. Still, a stay of execution is better than immediate termination.

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Telescope Wars

Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags European Extremely Large Telescope, Ground-based Programme, Square Kilometre Array, STFC on June 13, 2009 by telescoper

Over the last few months the Science and Technology Facilities Council has been setting up a review of its ground-based astronomy programme. The panel conducting the review has produced a consultation document, and is asking for input via an online questionnaire. There will also be a (rather short) public meeting in London on July 9th. The consultation period closes on July 31st.

Reviews of this kind would be necessary in the best of times in order to establish long-term scientific priorities and try to align the provision of facilities with those strategic objectives. Unfortunately, we don’t live in the best of times so the backdrop to the current review is a shrinking pot of money available for “traditional” ground-based astronomy and the consequent need to target planned programmes for the chop.

Andy and Sarah have already blogged about this -and they both know a lot more than me about ground-based astronomy – so I won’t try to cover the same ground as them. I would however, like to make a couple of points.

The review has to help STFC strike a balance between current facilities and projects for the future. The largest elements of the current ground-based programme include the subscription to ESO (including associated costs for ALMA, which amounts to over £200 Million), the twin 8m telescopes known as Gemini (North and South, about £60 Million), E-Merlin (about £24 Million), UKIRT and JCMT (about £34 Million); figures represent costs over the next 10 years or so. The two biggest projects that the UK would like to get involved in are a European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), an optical telescope currently aimed to be about 42m in diameter, and the Square Kilometre Array, a futuristic radio telescope. Each of these would cost the UK over £100 Million over the next decade.

The consultation document puts it quite succintly:

It would be unrealistic to imagine that in 2020 the UK would have a large stake in large facilities like E-ELT and SKA, and would also retain all its current ground-based facilities. It is always hard to forego a workhorse facility that has supported an active and successful science programme, in order to start construction of some future facility many years hence. But our bid for the capital costs for E-ELT and/or SKA would not be credible if we do not show that we are willing to do this.

I agree that it maintaining the current programme as well as acquiring an interest in both E-ELT and SKA is completely implausible. The more relevant question though is how deep we have to cut the ongoing astronomy programme in order to afford either of these, or whether we can do that at all. It seems quite likely to me that future funding of the ground-based programme is likely to suffer drastically, both because of cuts to the overall STFC grant that appear inevitable in the next comprehensive spending review and also the current STFC leadership’s bias in favour of space technology at the expense of science. On the latter point, it is worth noting that it is specifically the ground-based astronomy programme that is being lined up against the wall here; space-based projects of negligible scientific value, such as Moonlite and BEPI-Columbo are not to going be weighed in the same balance. At the very least, future involvement in a next-generation X-ray telescope should certainly have been in the mixer with other observatory-type facilities on the ground. I fear that the STFC Executive sees the current UK ground-based programme as significantly too large, and would like to squeeze it all into the box marked ESO. I would like to be able to sound more optimisitic, but I think that the most likely outcome of this review is therefore that the only current facilities that will survive into the medium term will be those provided through ESO membership. JCMT and UKIRT are nearing the end of their useful life anyway, but the writing is definitely on the wall for both Gemini and E-Merlin. Not that it hasn’t been before now…

If this the way things go, then the remaining issue is whether we can afford to be involved in both E-ELT and SKA, which seems to me to be most unlikely. If we have to pick one, which should it be? That is clearly going to be the topic of much debate. In the spirit of the drive for rationalisation I touched on above, it may well be that we don’t do anything at all outside the ESO umbrella. In that case the United Kingdom ends up with a ground-based astronomy programme consisting of the ESO facilities plus a share in the E-ELT (itself an ESO proposal). I think this would be a tragedy because I find the scientific case for SKA much stronger than that for E-ELT; it would have been a closer call if the ELT were still the 100m optical telescope as originally proposed many years ago (and which I used to call the FLT). I’m sure many will disagree for legitimate scientific reasons (rather than the desire to play “mine’s bigger than yours” with the Americans, who are currently developing a 30m telescope).

I’m sure there will also be many astronomers who would rather have neither SKA nor E-ELT if it means losing access to the suite of smaller telescopes that continue to produce many interesting scientific results. If it came to a vote I’m not sure what the result would be, which is why I want to encourage anyone who has any input to fill in the questionnaire!

A final little wrinkle on this question is the following. Suppose STFC decides not to support future involvement in SKA – I hope this isn’t the way things turn out, but in our dire financial circumstances it might be – does this make continued funding for E-Merlin more likely or less likely? Answers on a postcard (or even via the comments box)..

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Divided Loyalties

Posted in Biographical, Science Politics with tags Herschel, Newcastle United, Newcastle upon Tyne, Planck, STFC on May 16, 2009 by telescoper

It’s easy to tell that summer is on the way. England are playing the West Indies at Cricket. It’s the penultimate weekend of the Premiership football season. The undergraduates are taking their exams. I’m sitting with a pile of projects to mark. And it’s raining.

I suppose I have to mention the football. My team, Newcastle United, gave themselves a chance of avoiding relegation on Monday night by beating local rivals, Middlesborough 3-1. A win today at home against Fulham would pretty much have guaranteed safety. They lost 1-0. It now looks inevitable that they will be relegated after 16 years in the top flight.

It’s a thankless task being a Newcastle supporter. I’ve followed them all my life and they have managed to avoid winning any competition of any significance since the Fairs cup in 1968 (now called the UEFA cup). They have loyal fans and a wonderful stadium, but somehow seem completely unable to convert that into success on the field. This season they were doomed as soon as the manager Kevin Keegan quit over the owner Mike Ashley’s refusal to allow him to be involved in signing any players. After a period without a manager, during which they lost game after game, the club appointed veteran relegation specialist Joe Kinnear, who did OK for a while then at Christmas had to go into hospital with heart problems. Another run of poor results followed until, in desperation, the club appointed the iconic former player Alan Shearer to his first managerial position. His lack of experience showed, though, and he’s only managed to win one game. In short, the season has been a shambles.

When my father died (about 18 months ago), I thought that my interest in Newcastle United would wane. Football and music were the only two things we had in common after my parents split when I was about 12 and I went to live with my mother. I saw him only rarely in later years,and much of the time we spent together involved talking about football. However, I still find myself getting nervous on match days and looking anxiously for the scores whenever they’ve been playing. It’s like there is an umbilical cord that still connects me to my home town and I can’t get rid of it.

That feeling was reinforced yesterday when, following a conversation at the RAS Club last week, Robert Smith sent me a booklet that he had received when he attended a conference in Newcastle in 1965. The Official Guide to Newcastle upon Tyne (priced 2/6) filled me with a mixture of nostalgia and amusement. Ironically, given the football team’s inadequacies the motto of the city is FORTITER DEFENDIT TRIUMPHANS, which was also the motto of my old school, the Royal Grammar School (also mentioned in the booklet).

The little picture on the left shows the armorial bearings of the City of Newcastle upon Tyne. The official blazon is: Arms:- Gules three Castles triple towered Argent. Crest on a Wreath of the Colours. A Castle as in the arms issuant therefrom from a demi Lion guardant supporting a Flagstaff Or, flying therefrom a forked Pennon of the Arms of Saint George.

Supporters: – on either side a Sea Horse proper crined and finned Or.

Obviously supporters don’t guarantee success, even if they’re proper crined and finned.

Of course, I shall be disappointed if and when Newcastle get relegated next week, but I don’t go along with all the guff in the newspapers about how it will have dire consequences for the city. They’ve been relegated twice before in my lifetime, and the world didn’t end then nor will it now. In any case, I’d reckon the Football Club has taken much more out of the economy of Newcastle in recent years than it has put back into it. Hard-earned cash from supporters has gone straight into the pockets of overpaid players and inept management staff. Maybe relegation will shake the Club up, which will be good in the long run.

Anyway, every cloud has at least one silver lining and this one has two. At the start of the season, I was prescient enough to place a large bet on Newcastle to get relegated at quite long odds. I expect to be handsomely compensated by Mr William Hill when they do go down. The other thing is that they will have to play Cardiff City in the Championship next year, which will give me the chance to see them play in Cardiff’s brand new stadium.

Incidentally, Cardiff City blew their promotion hopes in spectacular fashion. Needing only to avoid losing to Preston North End by 5 goals in order to secure a place in the play-offs, they lost 6-0.

Meanwhile we’ve been coming down slowly from the high that was Thursday’s launch of Herschel and Planck. I was surprised to see Matt Griffin in the department yesterday afternoon because he was actually at the launch in Kourou. He had left after the launch and flown directly back to Cardiff (via Paris). Our other representatives will return over this weekend, and things will start to get back to normal.

Matt told me that he was so impressed with the professionalism of Arianespace, that he wasn’t at all nervous about the launch. Matt’s instrument, SPIRE, will switch on during 22 May and testing will start. I’m sure that Matt and his team will be more than a little nervous about that!

Assuming both Planck and Herschel work satisfactorily, the next problem we will have to face is the deluge of data that will shortly be upon us. The astronomers at Cardiff University have submitted an application for rolling grant support from STFC (not Swindon Town Football Club) to enable us to extract scientific results from new data especially from Herschel. Unfortunately, though, the coffers are pretty bare and it seems very unlikely that we will get the substantial uplift in funding we need to carry out the work on a reasonable timescale.

A rolling grant is intended to support an ongoing research programme. Typically the grants cover 5 years’ funding, enabling the group to offer longer term contracts to staff than is allowed by the 3-year standard grant format. After 3 years of the rolling period, the group has to bid again for another 5 year period but the timing means there is always two years’ grace, meaning that if renewal is not recommended the group still has two years’ funding so the plug isn’t pulled immediately. If an extension is offered but at a reduced level of funding, a group might decide to refuse the new grant and carry on with its existing two years, perhaps to apply in the following round.

The problem with the current financial situation is that STFC barely has the funds needed to continue its existing rolling grants. In other words if all the groups applying for rolling support declined their new contracts and rolled on their existing grants, STFC would only just be able to pay them. In such a situation there would be no new grants or any kind of increase in existing rollers. The implications for successful exploitation of Herschel and Planck appear to be grim and there could well be a lot of difficult decisions within the department to be made if we have to operate within a much reduced budget.

It would be ridiculous if a billion-dollar mission like Herschel ends up stymied because of the relatively small sums needed to exploit the data, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Football teams aren’t the only organizations to suffer from bad management.

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Good News, Bad News

Posted in Science Politics with tags astronomy, DIUS, STFC on May 1, 2009 by telescoper

Further to my gloomy prognosis about the implications of the Budget for astronomy research, I’ve managed to glean the following interpretation of the outcome for the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

Just to remind you that the situation before the budget settlement was announced last week was truly dire, with falling exchange rates leading to rises in the cost of subscriptions putting pressure on an already overstretched STFC budget. In fact, STFC actually underspent last year but was not allowed to carry the underspend forward into the tax year beginning this April so that has done nothing to help the imminent financial meltdown. The overall shortfall for 2009-10 was estimated pre-budget to be about £80 million, meaning that £80 million of current commitments would have to be ditched if nothing was done.

First, the good news. After the budget it has emerged that the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) has taken steps to “lend” STFC money to plug the shortfall arising from exchange rate fluctuations. This means the actual shortfall is not going to be as large as the previous estimate.

Now the bad news. There is no new money for STFC, and there is consequently still a serious gap in the finances. There will have to be about £20 million savings this financial year (against current commitment) and about £30 million next year. Not as bad as £80 million, but still very tough.

At this moment the powers that be are dusting off the Programmatic Review which involved the prioritisation of missions and facilities within the STFC remit. There is also yet another review of ground-based astronomy which is meant to be a long-term thing, but will presumably inform the decision-making process in the short term too.

A line had previously drawn as far down the list of priorities as funding would permit. Now the available funds are less the line will have to rise and some astronomical projects that thought they were safe will have to be ditched after all. This also depends on whether STFC saves money in other ways, such as from the grants line or by internal savings within its own administration.

It will be a nervous wait for many of us to see where and the axe will fall next…

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The Shape of Things to Come..

Posted in Science Politics with tags Budget, DIUS, STFC on April 24, 2009 by telescoper

The implications of this week’s budget for astronomy are gradually becoming clearer although a full picture is yet to emerge.

The following statement appeared on the webpages of the Science and Technology Facilities Council:

STFC’s budget of £491 million for 2009-10 is evidence of the Government’s commitment to investing in science in a period of severe national and global economic uncertainty.

STFC’s Chief Executive Officer, Professor Keith Mason, said: “Our budget represents a major investment in science at a time of increasing pressure on public spending, and will allow us to fund a wide array of world leading science delivering significant impact for the UK.”

“The budget confirms the Government’s commitment to, and acknowledgement of, investment in curiosity driven and application led research as essential elements to support the country’s economic growth in the short, medium and longer term.”

Professor Mason said the near cash^* budget of £491 million was more than the Council’s allocation in the Comprehensice Spending Review (CSR07), thanks to assistance from the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) in the form of a loan and compensation for foreign exchange exposure. This outcome follows extensive consultation between DIUS and the Research Councils to ameliorate the effect of the fall of the pound. However, it will unfortunately not allow STFC to fund the full science programme planned under its Programmatic Review.

Professor Mason said STFC would now consult on reprioritising its programme across the remainder of the CSR period. This consultation will cover both the short-term items required for 2009-10, and a longer term process to ensure stable platform for planning in the medium to longer term. Council will discuss options for 2009-10 at its meeting on the 28th April.

“For its part STFC has already imposed a series of internal savings, including on travel and severe restrictions on external recruitment. We will seek to identify further savings in order to concentrate resources on funding our core research programme,” Professor Mason said.

It appears, then, that there is to be short-term assistance from the effects of currency fluctuations but this will be in the form of a loan that will eventually have to be paid back from savings found within the programme. I suppose something’s better than nothing, despite the bland language, it is quite clear that we are heading for big cuts in the STFC programme and astronomy will not be immune.

The Times Higher has also covered the budget settlement for science and higher education generally in very downbeat terms. Echoing what I put in my previous post:

Although the Budget maintains an existing commitment to ring-fence the science budget, DIUS had reportedly sought a £1 billion increase in funding for scientific research as part of a stimulus package designed to use science to boost the economy.

Instead of this, research councils will be required to make £106 million in savings, which will then be reinvested elsewhere intheir portfolio “to support key areas of economic potential”.

We await details of where these “savings” will be made. My current understanding is that the STFC needs to find about £10 million immediately although whether this is on top of or including its share of the overall “efficiency savings”, I don’t know. In any case it is clear that this money will be taken from pure science programmes and spent instead on areas deemed to have “economic potential”. It looks like we’re all going to have to hone our bullshitting skills over the next few years.

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Economic Impact

Posted in Science Politics with tags Budget, DIUS, STFC on April 22, 2009 by telescoper

Like many of my colleagues I’ve been looking nervously through the lengthy documents produced by HM Treasury to fill in the details of the Chancellor’s Budget speech. I was hoping to find some evidence of a boost for science that might filter down as a rescue package for STFC and might dispel the rumours of savage cuts in the Astronomy programme. Unfortunately I didn’t find any.

No real details about the science programme are given in the lengthy budget report, at least not that I could find this afternoon. There are, however, a couple of worrying pointers that things might be going from bad to worse.

The Chancellor has decided to cut public spending overall by about £15 billion (largely by “efficiency savings”) in order to control the UK’s ballooning public debt. The Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) which sits above the Research Councils in the hierarchy of research management is mentioned twice in the document, in the following passages talking about savings:

£118 million through increasing the effectiveness of research activities funded by the Research Councils by reducing administration costs and refocusing spend on new research priorities;

and

An additional £106 million of savings delivered by the Research Councils within the science and research budget to be re-invested within that budget to support key areas of economic potential.

Both of these look to me like indications that money will be diverted from pure science into technology-driven areas. Far from there being a boost for astronomy, it looks like we face the opposite with money being squeezed from us and re-allocated to areas that can make a stronger case for economic potential.

Another indication of this phase change, which has been in the air for some time, appeared yesterday on the STFC website. The whole item can be found here, but the salient points are included in the following excerpt

Applicants for STFC rolling and standard grants will now be required to produce an impact plan, identifying the potential economic impacts of their proposal. The change takes effect from 21 April 2009 and will affect grants rounds from autumn 2009 onward.

The change follows a 2006 Research Councils UK project, and subsequent Excellence with Impact report, into the efficiency and value for money of Research Council peer review processes. The report recommended the Research Councils improve guidance to applicants and peer reviewers to ensure a shared understanding about the value of identifying the potential economic impact of research, and that the new requirements be supported in electronic application systems and guidelines.

More details of the spending priorities of DIUS within its overall budget will no doubt emerge in due course and they may yet reveal a tonic of some sort for STFC. What seems more likely, however, is that any such funds will be aimed at space gadgetry rather than at science. I have a feeling that the impact of the economic downturn on UK Astronomy is going to turn out to be dire.

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Budget Boost?

Posted in Science Politics with tags astronomy, Budget, Martin Rees, Physics, STFC on April 19, 2009 by telescoper

This Wednesday (22nd April 2009) the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, will deliver the UK government’s budget for this year. The background is of course the economic recession and the consequent collapse of our public finances. The government will have to borrow an estimated £175 billion over the next year, and it likely that taxes will eventually have to rise considerably to balance the books in the longer term.

Rumours are abounding about what will be in the budget and what won’t. According to today’s Observer, the centrepiece is likely to be a £50 billion scheme to revitalize the housing market. If this is the case then I think it’s a mistake. Our economy has been run for too long on the basis of money raised from inflated property valuations, and we need to take this opportunity to change to a more sustainable way of running the country. Other schemes that may emerge include a £2 billion scheme to help unemployed young people which is a better idea, but much of it would probably be wasted in bureaucracy rather than doing real good.

My own attention will be focussed on whether there is anything in Alistair Darling’s speech that indicates some help for science, particularly fundamental science like physics and astronomy. In yesterday’s Guardian the Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society, Lord Martin Rees argued for an injection of cash to stimulate science and innovation. About a month ago the BBC reported on efforts by Ministers to convince the treasury of the benefit of a £1 billion stimulus package for science along these lines. However, even if the powers that be listen to this argument (which is, in my view, unlikely), any increase in science funding would not necessarily be directed towards fundamental physics. I think if there isn’t anything for those of us working in astronomy in this budget, then we’re completely screwed.

I believe the funding crisis at the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) was precipitated by a conscious government decision to move funds away from blue skies research and into more applied, technology driven areas. The 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review was extremely tough on STFC but quite generous to some other agencies. Moreover, within STFC itself there seems to be a shift from science-driven to technology-driven projects, signalled by the cancellation of projects such as Clover to save a couple of million, and the allocation of funds to projects such as Moonlite which is devoid of any scientific interest and which could end up costing as much as £150 million over the next five years or so.

The true depth of the ongoing STFC crisis is only gradually becoming apparent. It was bad enough to start with, but has been exacerbated by the fall in value of sterling against the euro since 2007 which has meant that the cost of subscriptions to CERN, ESA and ESO have risen dramatically (by about 40%). These form such a large part of STFC’s expenditure – the CERN subscription alone is £70m out of a total budget of around £800m – that it cannot absorb the increased cost and it is now looking to make swingeing cuts on top of the 25% cut in research grants already implemented.

News emerged last week that STFC has abandoned plans to fund any R&D grants for ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme, and there are dark rumours circulating that it is considering cancelling all astronomy grants this year as well as clawing back money already given to universities in previous rounds. I hope these are not true, but I fear the worst.

Cuts on this scale would be devastating, demoralising, and I honestly think would destroy the United Kingdom as a place to do astronomy. They would also signal a complete breakdown of trust between scientists and the research council that is supposed to support them, if that hadn’t happened already.

Incidentally it is noticeable that STFC hasn’t bothered to report any of these matters publically through its website. Instead, the lead story on the STFC news page is about a visit by Prince Andrew to the Rutherford Appleton Lab. No sign yet, then, of the promised improvement in communication between the STFC Executive and its community.

The way I see it, the urgent issue is not whether we get a stimulus package , but whether we even get the bit of sticking plaster that is needed to saves physics and astronomy from utter ruin. The cost would be a small fraction of the billions lavished on profligate bankers, but I’m not at all sure that the government either appreciates or cares about the scale of the problem.

Anyway, coincidentally, next week sees the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting (NAM), which is this year held jointly with the European Astronomical Society’s JENAM at the University of Hertfordshire. I won’t be going because it has unfortunately been organized in term time apparently because European astronomers refuse to attend meetings in the vacations, at least if they’re in places like Hatfield. STFC representatives have been invited; it remains to be seen what, if anything, they will have to say.

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Clover Story

Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags Clover, Physics World., STFC on April 2, 2009 by telescoper

Just a quick note for those interested in the story of Clover, Physics World have run a news item on their website.

You may also like to read the article by Alan Heavens over on the e-astronomer.

Note added on Monday 6th April: the Nature slant on the story is now published online, complete with quote from yours truly…

Another update (9th April). Welsh Newspaper The Western Mail has now run a story on the clover cancellation and there was a short item on the BBC Radio Wales News this evening.

Another update (14th April). A statement from Walter Gear, Principal Investigator of the Clover project, about the current status of Clover has been placed on the Cardiff University School of Physics & Astronomy web pages.

Update: 22nd April 2009. Here is the text of a piece I wrote for today’s Research Fortnight:

An undeserved end

Science projects don’t get much purer than CLOVER, an experiment designed to search for evidence of the existence of primordial gravitational waves by making ultra-sensitive measurements of the polarisation of the cosmic microwave background.

From its vantage point in the Atacama Desert in Chile, CLOVER was intended to probe the state of the universe when it was less than a billionth of a billionth of a second old, to test our understanding of the Big Bang theory. Unfortunately, the Science and Technology Facilities Council says it is cancelling funding for the experiment.

Gravitational waves have been studied theoretically and are known to be intimately related to the structure of space-time itself, the understanding of which is arguably the fundamental goal of modern science. The first discovery of the presence of gravitational waves will lead to the emergence of a brand new area of physics. In anticipation of this new science, the CLOVER team—entirely British, with members in the universities of Cardiff, Cambridge, Oxford and Manchester—has established a technical capability in the UK that is second to none. Cancellation will prevent the team from making direct experimental observations of the universe that would not only have been of immense scientific importance, but could also have had deep cultural significance.

So if CLOVER is so good, why is it being cancelled?

The answer lies in an unfortunate combination of circumstances. CLOVER was initially funded in 2004, with
£4.8 million from the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, one of the forerunners of the STFC. This budget was not sufficient to complete the experiment, for two main reasons. First, the original grant did not include the costs of setting up a site, which was originally to be provided by overseas collaborators in Antarctica. When this option fell through, the cost of the alternative site in Chile (approximately £0.8m) had
to be found. Second, there were delays due to technical challenges, such as the need to develop some of the world’s most sensitive far-infrared superconducting cameras. So, the CLOVER team was unable to complete the project within the original budget, and went back to the STFC to request extra money. This brought a third factor into play.

Since 2007, the research councils, including the STFC, have changed their method of funding university-based research. In the new full-economic-costs regime, costs are substantially higher than at the time of the original award. These elements combined to leave the CLOVER team with a shortfall of about £2.6m, bringing the overall cost to completion to about £7.5m, although the increase in resources required would be only around 20 per cent if calculated on the pre-FEC basis of the initial funding.

Unfortunately, despite receiving strong support from the scientific community and being rated extremely highly in recent prioritisation exercises, the STFC Council has decided that it does not have the funds and has abruptly cancelled the CLOVER experiment.

The background to this decision is one of dire financial circumstances within the research council. Created in 2007, the STFC was set up with insufficient funding to continue all the programmes that it inherited from its predecessors. The deficit (of around £80m) has led to swingeing cuts in research grants over the past year. The pound has also fallen dramatically against the euro, increasing the cost of subscriptions to the European Space Agency, Cern and the European Southern
Observatory. The balance sheet of the STFC is now in total disarray. CLOVER is the first casualty in what may become a large-scale cull of fundamental science projects.

The STFC’s decision on CLOVER means that an important instrument will be lost, and the millions already spent on it wasted. The technology will be difficult to replace. The many gifted scientists who have been working on CLOVER will have to leave the UK to continue in the field, and are unlikely to return. Their fate is unlikely to tempt younger people into a career in science either.

In cancelling CLOVER, the council has effectively closed the door on UK involvement in cosmic microwave background science in general, an area that has already led to two Nobel prizes for physics. The decision also provides worrying evidence that the STFC seems to be turning away from fundamental science towards technology- driven projects. For example the lunar probe Moonlite has recently won funding for initial development studies without ever passing through the rigorous peer review required of CLOVER. If this really is the way the STFC is going, then we may be witnessing the beginning of the end for British astronomy.

The Waste Land

Posted in Poetry, Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags Clover, Keith Mason, Poetry, STFC, T.S. Eliot on April 1, 2009 by telescoper

APRIL is the cruellest month, sending
Clover into the dead land, ditching
The great for the dire, erring
Dead heads caused spring pain.
Keith Mason fucked it up, smothering
Good science with tons of shit, ending
Our little dream; we’re the losers.

After The Waste Land, Part I: The Burial of the Dead, by T.S. Eliot.

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Clover and Out

Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags B-mode, Clover, Cosmology, gravitational waves, Inflation, parity, Physics, Quiet, Spider, STFC on March 31, 2009 by telescoper

One of the most exciting challenges facing the current generation of cosmologists is to locate in the pattern of fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background evidence for the primordial gravitational waves predicted by models of the Universe that involve inflation.

Looking only at the temperature variation across the sky, it is not possible to distinguish between tensor (gravitational wave) and scalar (density wave) contributions (both of which are predicted to be excited during the inflationary epoch). However, scattering of photons off electrons is expected to leave the radiation slightly polarized (at the level of a few percent). This gives us additional information in the form of the polarization angle at each point on the sky and this extra clue should, in principle, enable us to disentangle the tensor and scalar components.

The polarization signal can be decomposed into two basic types depending on whether the pattern has odd or even parity, as shown in the nice diagram (from a paper by James Bartlett)

The top row shows the E-mode (which look the same when reflected in a mirror and can be produced by either scalar or tensor modes) and the bottom shows the B-mode (which have a definite handedness that changes when mirror-reflected and which can’t be generated by scalar modes because they can’t have odd parity).

The B-mode is therefore (in principle) a clean diagnostic of the presence of gravitational waves in the early Universe. Unfortunately, however, the B-mode is predicted to be very small, about 100 times smaller than the E-mode, and foreground contamination is likely to be a very serious issue for any experiment trying to detect it.

An experiment called Clover (involving the Universities of Cardiff, Oxford, Cambridge and Manchester) was designed to detect the primordial B-mode signal from its vantage point in Chile. You can read more about the way it works at the dedicated webpages here at Cardiff and at Oxford. I won’t describe it in more detail here, for reasons which will become obvious.

The chance to get involved in a high-profile cosmological experiment was one of the reasons I moved to Cardiff a couple of years ago, and I was looking forward to seeing the data arriving for analysis. Although I’m primarily a theorist, I have some experience in advanced statistical methods that might have been useful in analysing the output. It would have been fun blogging about it too.

Unfortunately, however, none of that is ever going to happen. Because of its budget crisis, and despite the fact that it has spent a large amount (£4.5M) on it already, STFC has just decided to withdraw the funding needed to complete it (£2.5M) and cancel the Clover experiment.

Clover wasn’t the only B-mode experiment in the game. Its rivals include QUIET and SPIDER, both based in the States. It wasn’t clear that Clover would have won the race, but now that we know it’s a non-runner we can be sure it won’t.

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In the Dark