Diamond Geezers

For many weeks, I have had interesting and difficult conversations with fellow Physicists in Edinburgh who have a somewhat different perspective on the STFC situation - condensed matter physicists who are long term users of ISIS, SRS, ESRF, and now ISIS-2 and Diamond. These guys are fed up with us astro-pp folk acting as if we were all of Physics; and fear that our whingeing is going to damage us all. A comment on this earlier post gave a link to a Research Fortnight piece. Not everybody has access, so here is a PDF.

Now these guys do some really good stuff. I would say that, because I am Head of the School of Physics, but its true. Even as an astronomer, I am fascinated by some of what they do. They are measuring material properties at pressures close to that in the centre of Jupiter, and within shouting distance of the outer parts of Brown Dwarfs. They want to understand the formation of planetary ices, and we are talking about simulated planetary atmosphere experiments.

As the STFC problems broke, they too were nervous, but for different reasons. It seemed obvious to them that the underlying problem was that astro-pp spending was out of control, as it periodically is (they say). This is mostly because subscriptions dominate the budget, are set in Europe not the UK, grow with GDP, and are subject to exchange rate fluctuations. But also there were vast aspirations such as ILC and Aurora, and looming problems such as the VISTA penalties. As far as they were concerned, the idea that problems were “due to Diamond and ISIS” were just a myth. There is no Diamond over-run they said - the costs have not changed since 2003. Diamond has been delivered on time and on budget. So they felt this was nothing to do with them.. but then ..woahh !! Hundreds of redundancies at Daresbury and RAL ! And rumours of closing down Diamond and ISIS for part of the year.

So.. since then the National Audit Office report has become well known, making it clear that the problem was indeed NOT with Diamond and ISIS. The problem was simply with CCLRC not putting enough money aside for all its commitments. But, my colleagues say, this is only one of several problems, along with the others above. Furthermore, if you know enough tensor calculus to understand near cash, non cash, DEL and all that mumbo jumbo (see John Peacock’s recent comment), it looks like Government has fixed the ~Diamond-ISIS ops costs problem, which means that what remains is that other astro-pp stuff.

So all this was coffee room grumbling until the IUS select committee report came out; now the “ex-CCLRC community” have gone public, because they fear our childish behaviour will bring us all down.

Some of the IUS report wording certainly did not help. “One community has been saddled with the debt of another” was an attempt at blunt truth, but its not fair - the debt had nothing to do with the community that used CCLRC facilities. Now STFC Council have fought back on this issue - news issued by Council states that pain has been equally shared - £38M cuts on the PPAN side, £45M cuts on the PALS side. My guess is some of you will be sceptical about that, so I will let you at it…

Actually the bit that made me larf in the RF piece was the suggestion that astronomers are organised … If Particle Physics is a Stalinist Economy, and EPSRC and their clients represent a perfect Free Market, then of course Astronomy is a bit of a good ole British muddle. You can do what you like, but we don’t do things like that here old chap.

Dinner at the Drones

On Friday afternoon I gave a talk to the Royal Astronomical Society on big astronomical surveys and the sociological changes they are driving.. It pluggged UKIRT/UKIDSS, WFAU and CASU, and AstroGrid. I am proud to report these are all STFC Band 4 projects !! Woo hee. Keep going guys. The talk involved a live demo of both the WFCAM Science Archive and AstroGrid and went really well. (Many thanks to Mike Read, Mark Holliman, and Nigel Hambly for last minute server kicking.)

During the day there was a specialist meeting on the 42m Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), with fine opening reviews by Jason Pyromaniac and Captain Hook. Of course this used to be the 100m Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (OWL). I look forward to the day (2009 ?) when it gets descoped to 25m and renamed the FBT (Fairly Big Telescope). Some of the science cases are starting to look rather groovy. My favourite is the proposed CODEX instrument, which would take high resolution spectra of distant quasars. All been done before, you say ? Ah yes but they claim that over a period of twenty years, we should be able to see the Lyman-alpha forest move … i.e. we will actually directly detect the expansion of the Universe. Corr.

After my talk I got invited to the RAS Dining Club. Many years ago when I was a student I assumed the Dining Club was a sort of Astronomical Freemason thing - a secret club within the club where all the decisions got taken. Maybe that was true then, but it sure ain’t now, as about two thirds of the membership is retired anyway. It was like finding myself in a PG Wodehouse story. Dinner was at the Athenaeum, where somebody had to find me a tie. Luckily the Club keeps an emergency tie in a special wooden box. Conversation was deafening and at the end every guest had to tell a funny story. I felt sure that at any moment we would all start throwing bread rolls at Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright.

I didn’t tell the gorilla joke.

Durham ahead of the game

Yesterday I was at the fifth anniversary celebration for the Durham Ogden Centre. Maybe Carlos Frenk knows something we don’t, cos the Ogden Centre web page says that “ongoing support is provided by PPARC”. Of course, Carlos is on the Wakeham panel, so maybe the plan is to re-invent PPARC. Durham have got the new web page ready, but released it too early ? Or… they haven’t changed the web page for eighteen months … surely not.

Anyhoo… it was a splendid afternoon, with a series of excellent review talks on cosmology and particle physics by Carlos himself, Silvia Pascoli, Shaun Cole, Nigel Glover, and Martin Ward. The room was crammed full of PPA types. Guess what the main topic of conversation was at coffee time ? It wasn’t the Higgs Boson. Strangely, there didn’t seem to be anyone there from STFC.

My favourite moment was when Arnold Wolfendale asked Carlos a tricky question, which produced an uncharacteristically long pause in the Frenk flow of speech. Finally he said, “I think you should all know that when I was interviewed for my lectureship in Durham in 1985, Arnold asked me the same question. Well, Arnold, the answer is still the same …”

Judge Willis Reports

If you are a UK astronomer or particle physicist, then two possible positions pertain. (a) You have been in a coma. (b) You are perfectly well aware that a Parliamentary Select Committee has been digging into the recent Science Budget Allocations. Paul Crowther has all sorts of details, and my own reports of the hearings are here, here, and here . Well … they have finally completed their deliberations and published a report. If you were expecting a whitewash, think again. Its pure Semtex.

Quotes from the summary :

“… in merging two Research Councils, one research community has been saddled with the debt of another, despite assurances from the Government that STFC would be formed without any legacy issues.”

“In STFC itself, we found weaknesses in its peer review system, its communications and its management.”

“We recommend that STFC wait for the results of the Wakeham review of physics before implementing the cuts proposed in the Delivery Plan and that it use this time to consult with its stakeholders”

“…substantial and urgent changes need to be made to the way in which the Council is run in order to restore confidence and to give the Council the leadership it desperately needs.”

Wow. As you would expect, STFC have issued a firm riposte which you will find at the STFC website. I am trying to decide whether the right comparison is Geoff Boycott or Edith Piaf …

Wakeham weirdness

This evening I have been drafting our submission to the Wakeham review - both the Departmental submission, and the Vice Chancellor’s submission, which of course I have the honour of having been asked to draft … The questions are quite striking. After Q1=”name please” (oooo der hard ones first eh…) we go straight into

Q2 Please list and describe five examples of non-academic impact that have stemmed from research carried out by members of your department …

Wow. It takes until Q9 before we get to the expected “so, is STFC crap or what ?” question. (Of course many of my colleagues are looking for the “so is EPSRC crap or what ?” question … you can stare at EPSRC documents all day trying to decide whether your grant application should fit into “digital economy” or “securing the future”…

Over at the VC questionnaire this looks like a key question :

Q3 : Has the focus of research in your Department had to be adjusted to attract students and ensure long term viability ?

Of course ! We hire nothing except astronomers, because this gets thousands of punters in. We tell them at interview they are almost certain to meet Heather Cooper at some point, or possibly just Chris Lintott. Meanwhile, every one of these astronomers demands a personal eight metre telescope.

My favourite though is Q12 on the Departmental submission :

Q12 : Please detail the number of staff in your Department that have received senior management training.

Jeez.

One Hundred and Fifteen and still counting

Oil is now $115 per barrel. We ‘re all going to hell in a handbasket. By the time STFC’s problems are sorted, Western Civilisation will have collapsed anyway. Sorry, got to go now, teaching my kids how to use a bow and arrow.

Wakeham Up

The long awaited RCUK review of the Health Of Physics in the UK, aka the Wakeham Review, is now thoroughly underway. The panel had their first meeting Feb 29th; by May 2nd Physics Departments and VCs etc have to return their questionnaire submissions; there is a two day meeting with witnesses on June 23-24; the panel reports to DIUS Sept 15th. The questionnaire is fairly weird … The review has a web page on which you can find the panel membership. You can also find the review remit. This of course is deathly dull and detailed, leading to one thinking “OK, what’s REALLY going on ?”. Coffee room chatter produces three theories :

(A) The Fix. Government knows that the funding crisis is real, and that the STFC is after all the wrong structure, but they can’t be seen to be caving in to whingeing and sensational press. So they need a nice quiet rational review to justify rescuing astro-pp without destroying facilities for condensed matter, chemistry, and biology in the process.

(B) The Kick into Touch. Government is uninterested in all the whingeing because they have given a broad area plenty of money and its up to us to sort out our own problems. So the review is just to keep us busy while we all gradually calm down and accept life.

(C) The Descending Boot. Government feels that the fundamental problem is in the Universities, who have been trapped into relying too much on “PPARC” science because of competing for student bums on seats. The balance of Physics is unhealthy in the UK and needs fixing.

Mesdames et Messieurs, faite vos jeux.

VISTA mirror at last !

I am in Heidelberg, at a meeting of the PanSTARRS science consortium. PanSTARRS is a very ambitious project : four identical telescopes with very wide field of view cameras, scanning the sky repeatedly. Right now we are doing the pilot project with just one telescope. Its built and currently under test and should start a three year survey programme pretty soon, doing dark matter mapping, killer rocks in space, acceleration from supernovae, and all that trendy stuff. Its not quite as fast at surveying as the planned LSST, but thats years away yet …

Meanwhile in the infrared … the survey speed is nowhere near good enough for this kind of repeated sky scanning, but since the UKIRT Wide Field Camera (WFCAM) arrived, the speed is at last fast enough to make proper sky surveys plausible. My own baby of course is UKIDSS (get your data at the WSA page, or write a Python script and run it through AstroGrid). In the Southern Hemisphere, the great hope has been VISTA, a 4m telescope entirely dedicated to IR surveying, and with a camera thats even bigger than WFCAM. Its been nearly ready for months, but we have all been waiting for the primary mirror - its been stuck in Moscow, getting polished. Its not just that we are itching for the data … VISTA was promised to ESO as part of the UK joining fee, and the contract had penalty clauses .. another financial problem looming over STFC.. But its arrived in Chile at last !!

There is a press release and multiple web site splashes : at QMW , at ROE, at STFC, and ESO.

I don’t know whether we finally finally avoid the penalties .. but at least the good PR should help cheer up our STFC chums.

Gordon’s Final Word

I got another email from 10 Downing Street today. (Yes I know, most of you did too..) I wrote about Gordon’s initial response to the famous petition in this post. Here is the text of the final response :

You signed a petition asking the Prime Minister to “reverse the decision to cut vital UK contributions to Particle Physics and Astronomy.”

The Prime Minister’s Office has responded to that petition and you can view it here:

http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page15216.asp

Prime Minister’s Office

Petition information - http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Physics-Funding/

If you would like to opt out of receiving further mail on this or any other
petitions you signed, please email optout@petitions.pm.gov.uk

Have a read of the petition. Its a mixture of depressing and encouraging. Of course, the Government was never going to say “Oh dear you are quite right, here is lots more money”. That ain’t how things work. However this :

Claimed reductions in STFC’s budget appear to have been derived from STFC’s aspirations for the three-year Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) period (2008/9 - 2010/11). These aspirations never constituted an agreed set of activities or funding for them, and the suggestion that £80m has been cut from its budget is wrong.

is close to insulting. We are not stupid. Nobody said £80M has been cut from the STFC budget. Merely unfunded aspirations ? That applies to the ILC, but not to discussing plans for several hundred job cuts, sending a message to every UK University saying “how would you respond to 25-40% grant cuts”, and publishing a Delivery Plan announcing “We plan to withdraw from future investment in the twin 8-metre Gemini telescopes” and “We will cease all support for ground-based solar-terrestrial physics facilities” and “We will cease to invest in high-energy gamma ray astronomy experiments”. (I am avoiding plugging the cases that affect me personally). These are facts and quotes and they are cuts. I am not even saying they are wrong to do … I might have done these things too … but saying “there are no cuts, only unfunded aspirations” is more or less spitting in our face. I was actually pretty impressed with the STFC performance at NAM, and so really disappointed they allowed these patronising words to escape Number Ten.

On the other hand .. The response says

It is a tribute to UK science that it will always be the case that there will be more proposals for scientific research than the funding is able to cover. Funding bodies such as STFC will always have to make difficult decisions and it is both justified and understandable for there to be a debate over how these decisions are made.

Which seems to say it was ok for us to make a fuss. Huh. Maybe we are not foolish children after all. Perhaps more importantly the response says :

This follows large increases in funding in recent years and means that there would be no major reductions in physics funding before the outcome of the Wakeham Review is known. (Professor Bill Wakeham, Vice Chancellor of Southampton University, has been asked to lead an independent review of the health of physics overall and we, and the Research Councils UK (RCUK), will pay close attention to his conclusions, which are expected in the Autumn.)

The community and the RAS have been consistently asking for this, so its very good to see. So.. having had my hissy fit … lets all start working to make the best of this. We have time.

Next up, Wakeham. Just got the questionnaire … some thoughts on this soon…

World saved by the Wii

Sorry folks. Another title tease. Patience.

When I wasn’t at the STFC Community Forum on Thursday, I was instead at a really good seminar about renewable energy, given by David Mackay from the Cavendish. He gave a hard headed look at UK requirements and what various renewable schemes can deliver. (David has a marvellous book called “Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air“). The main conclusion was that if you insist on European or US levels of consumption, then any successful renewable scheme has to be country sized - cover Wales with photocells etc - which isn’t practically or politically possible for the UK. This didn’t surprise me. Before STFC politics took over this blog, my most read post was about how extrapolated world energy requirements will get uncomfortably close to the solar input. However, David was more optimistic than I was there, suggesting that if we take an international approach, we really can solar-farm several Wales-areas in the North African desert and fuel Europe and Africa. So its possible in principle but still politically kinda tricky… Alternatively of course you can do it the Roger Angel way. Mirrors in Space.

That evening I had dinner with David, Alan Heavens, and Stephen Salter, a well known Edinburgh engineering genius. In the 1970s he invented the wave duck, and now he is having another go at saving the world - global cooling with albedo control. All we need is a fleet of two thousand automated ships, that drift around the oceans, hoover up sea water, and shoot a fine spray of particles up to the clouds. The idea seems to be that this (err somehow) changes the way cloud particles nucleate, and so changes their size distribution, making the clouds more reflective to incoming visible and UV, but without changing the reflectivity for IR on the way up. We make the clouds whiter folks. This takes very little energy cost. I haven’t read his paper, which is in press in Phil Trans, but there is a BBC news item on it.

Back to energy. Of course if we can just cut our consumption … David said that our energy consumption is about equal amounts transport, heating, and making stuff. Of course we can insulate our drafty Victorian Edinburgh homes better, but we can also turn down the thermostat. David said (I think… this was after a few glasses of wine..) that in the 1950s the average household temperature in the winter was 12C, compared to 20C now. Part of the problem is, we are all so sedentary… but things are changing !

When I were a lad we watched TV all day. My kids of course have spent years playing on the Playstation or checking Bebo. But since Christmas - things have changed ! We have a Wii and now the whole damn family leaps about playing imaginary tennis and so forth. Much less heating needed.

There. You knew I’d get there.