Monday, January 21, 2008

The Funding Black Hole

Two graduate students in the UK have started a petition to protest against the recent funding cuts in physics that severely hit UK's high energy physics and astrophysics/astronomy.

Two physics students at the University of Bristol have organised a petition against the recently-announced funding cut of £80 million by the body that funds physics research in the UK, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

This follows the condemnation of the cuts by many of the UK’s most senior scientists, such as Professor Stephen Hawking. Over 600 UK physics students have now signed the petition.
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Jackson said: “I was at CERN when the cuts were announced. The reaction amongst my colleagues to the sweeping and sudden decision was one of tremendous shock. Last month, fundamental physics seemed to be a field with a dazzling future. This month a whole generation of young scientists is completely demoralised.”


I hope they get a lot more people to sign their petition. How this will change what has been done is another issue.

Zz.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

There is also the Number 10 e-petition

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

which is actually doing fairly well in terms of popularity; almost exactly a third as many signitures as that asking to Make Jeremy Clarkson Prime Minister.

It may not rescue UK physics reseach, but at least some civil servant will be forced to spend five minutes writing you (and everyone else, en masse) an email response to say they've read it.