Ever since we lived in caves, people have gazed up at the night sky and wondered where the heck it all came from. It’s one of the things that makes us different from animals. Britain has produced famous astronomers since Charles II founded the Royal Greenwich Observatory in 1675. That’s why the international meridian goes through Greenwich. We’ve built wonderful telescopes ever since Isaac Newton.
And now we’re going to stop. The governement’s apparently decided that we’re a third world country, and we can’t afford a decent astronomy budget any more. They’re cutting the budget by ?80 milllion.
Now that sounds a lot. It’s certainly waaaaay more than I ever expect to earn in my lifetime. But as government budgets go, it’s about what you’d expect to spend on feeding the cats that keep the mice down. Put it this way, they spent ?80 billion – one thousand times as much – to rescue Northern Rock. The astronomy shortfall would buy you about 1/30th of a trident submarine (according to Wikipedia, four submarines cost £14.9 billion at 2005 prices).
In order to sdave this money, a huge amount of science is at risk. You can see the horrendously long list at http://www.saveastronomy.co.uk Amoung other things, UK astronomers may not have access to any large telescopes inthe Northern hemisphere. That’s half the sky closed to them!
The telescopes here on La Palma are getting old, certainly, but they have modern instruments, and they still produce a lot of good science. (See http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/ING/About-ING/Strategy/strategic_issues.html)
The justification for this butchery is that astronomy doesn’t produce “technology transfer”. Meaning the new technologies that are invented for astronomy can’t be spun off into commercial stuff.
So we can all sleep soundly in our beds, reassured by the knowledge that the country’s being run by people who’ve never heard of digital cameras. (Yup, the Royal Greenwhich Observatory used to be a world leader in astronomical instrumentation. They were particularly good at CCD technology – the bit at the heart of a digital camera that converts the light into a digital file. John Major’s govenment shut the place down. Most of the expertise was los, although some went to the Royal Observatory at Edinburgh, which is now under threat too.)
And did you know that the ceramic part of ceramic hobs was developed for telescope mirrors? The almost-finished telescope on the island, GranTeCan, has that kind of mirror.
And you know I think they’ve got the wrong end of the stick anyway. Most science doesn’t produce new technology. On the whole, science gives rise to new science, and technology gives rise to new technology. But every now and then, one bit of science in perhaps a thousand gives birth to a whole chain of new technology. For example, silicon chips used to be a scientific curiosity. But that one scientific discovery is the basis of all modern computer technology.
Here’s the important bit. It’s impossible to tell in advance which bit of pure science will be the jackpot. That doesn’t mean we should give up on science. It means we should keep plugging away.
If you agree that this is a really bad idea, please sign the petition at: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Physics-Funding/
Some people might say the country simply can’t afford big telescopes. To my mind, poverty isn’t giving up 1/30th of a submarine. Poverty is when you stop reaching for the stars.
