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Space Science

Jodrell Bank May Close Down 53

Posted by kdawson from the not-just-pulsars dept.
Anonymous Astronomer writes "MERLIN, the UK's only radio astronomy facility, is facing closure following the results of a Programmatic Review carried out by the Science and Technology Facilities Council, the results of which were announced on Monday. The review placed MERLIN and the upgraded telescope e-MERLIN, due to go online later this year following an investment of £8M, in the low-priority category under serious threat of funding cuts. The upgraded array of telescopes, situated across the UK, will be 30 times more sensitive than the current array and will be a unique facility for observing distant objects and helping us understand the universe. If these cuts go ahead however, not only MERLIN but the entire Observatory including the iconic Lovell telescope, based at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire, will be under threat of closure."
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Jodrell Bank May Close Down More

Jodrell Bank May Close Down

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  • ... why not let the public (volunteers) operate them?

    Or divert some of that money from setting up and monitoring 20 million CCD cameras to looking outside the goldfish bowl ...

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Naughty Bob ( 1004174 )

      Or divert some of that money from setting up and monitoring 20 million CCD cameras to looking outside the goldfish bowl ...
      That gives me an idea-

      Perhaps astronomers could happen across a suspected terrorist or two, out in the void...

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        This was modded flamebait? Who gave Ann Coulter mod points???

  • A Scandle (ass candle) (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Naughty Bob ( 1004174 ) on Thursday March 06, 2008 @05:23PM (#22669322)
    A pathetic decision, especially considering the relatively tiny cost of maintaining the facility.

    I live an hour or so away, and in addition to the excellent science conducted, it is a magnet for school kids for a hundred miles around, who are pretty much guaranteed a trip to its brilliant, inspirational visitors' center.

    If this closure goes ahead, they are giving up so much to save so little.

  • It's standard negotiating tactic in the UK (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ribuck ( 943217 ) on Thursday March 06, 2008 @05:25PM (#22669346)
    It's standard negotiating tactic in the UK, to list the most popular projects at the bottom of the funding list. They are sure to be saved (in one form or another), and all the other projects listed above them will also be safe.

    Our council does the same. Every time they want to cut taxes, they threaten to cut the festivals (which consume the tiniest pittance of the budget). No-one wants the festivals to die, so the council gets to raise the taxes. If the council proposed to cut some of their unpopular expenditure, they would never get to increase taxes.

  • Awww.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Aegis Runestone ( 1248876 )
    This is sad. Extremely sad. The destruction of the pursuit of knowledge due to money. Now, one may argue that we have lost so much money due to broken down space exploration robots, like a few to Mars, and some Shuttle explosions which also slew the innocent crew inside; however, observatories, telescopes and other ground-based astronomical projects, if any, should not be undermined or removed by money.

    I agree with one the posters about volunteer work. If people love the project enough, this is their chance

  • No Surprise... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by owlnation ( 858981 )
    Since Tony Blair's election, the UK has firmly and clearly been headed straight for a new Dark Ages. This is just another sign of the impending apocalypse.

    The fat, retarded, drunken, violent UK youth of today will have no need of telescopes in the future -- other than to spy on each other, of course.

    If you are a scientist, if you have a brain, make plans to leave the UK -- it's your only hope.
    • Sure, a country full of idiots, that's a brilliant idea. Go ahead and leave, meanwhile, I (one of these "UK Youth of today" you mention) will be trying to actually change things here.
    • If you are a scientist, if you have a brain, make plans to leave the UK -- it's your only hope.

      and go where...?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Elky Elk ( 1179921 )
      I'm a UK scientist and I'm not leaving because I don't spend all day reading the Daily Mail

  • Jodrell Bank (Score:5, Informative)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <<moc.oohay> <ta> <kapimi>> on Thursday March 06, 2008 @05:59PM (#22669816) Homepage Journal
    Was, for a very long time, the world's largest steerable single-dish radio telescope. In fact, for a long time, it was the largest radio telescope. The dish is amazingly precise. Even before an upgrade in 2001, large parts of the surface [man.ac.uk] had defects averaging a millimeter or less. A photo of some of the worst-hit areas show what the weather will do [man.ac.uk]. Although they don't show the defects on the current dish, they do show what the new panels look like [man.ac.uk] in-situ.

    But the big dish isn't the only thing at the Jodrel Bank facility. Their homepage mentions that the Square Kilometer Array Programme Development Office [man.ac.uk] is located there. This is an international project of enormous significance. (Imagine being able to see an Earth-sized planet, orbiting at 1 AU from its sun, 100 light-years away, and have enough data to take measurements of what gasses are in the atmosphere.)

    Jodrell Bank also has cultural significance and references pepper the British conciousness. Had he not pursued music, Brian May would have been the one slamming the UK Government's move from the offices of Jodrell Bank.

    Then there's the research exchange program with Europe. European countries trade time and access at a facility in one country for access to another facility somewhere else, for free. Closing Jodrell Bank will mean British radio astronomers have nothing to trade and will need to pay to access telescopes elsewhere in the world. Access other countries will still get for free. This means research grants will be worth less to someone from Britain than to someone in another country. This will worsen the "brain drain" - nobody wants to live in a country where they can't afford to hold a job. You will have noticed that British scientists are doing far less high-energy physics since they shut the nuclear structure facility in Daresbury (home of Lewis Carrol, interestingly). It's because they can't afford the prices they now have to pay. From free to thousands of dollars an hour, without a single penny more in grant money to cover it.

    Finally, there's the secondary impact. It'll likely cause several departments at the University of Manchester to shut their doors forever. Cheshire is a largely agricultural, impoverished region, so the loss of jobs in the community will be severe. Jodrell Bank is also a major tourist icon, which means there's a significant risk tourism will crash in the area - another major source of money. You can only split time on existing telescopes so far, putting astronomers out of work. This is not a degree you can really use to get a job elsewhere. Many existing projects rely on Jodrell Bank as part of a network of telescopes. Losing it will create a lot of ill-will and possibly cost a lot of projects a lot of money in a bid to fill in the data gaps as best they can.

    But, then, why should a White Hall mandarin care about such petty details?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Degreeless ( 1250850 )

      All of the above is certainly true but I'd like to add to your excellent points with a little personal flavour.

      As a boy I, like many in the region, went with school to Jodrell Bank and stood in awe, looking at the great dish. In my youthful mind the very thing that this dish represented was alien and strange, but at the same time watching it scour the autumn sky looking for something so distant was awe inspiring. It really fired my brain as I'm sure it did to many others like me and to lose it not just as

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jd ( 1658 )
        Same here. I also got to go into the control room itself, when I was about 8 or so. Told not to touch any of the switches. If only I'd not listened....
      • Ditto, and on a fine day I could walk up Werneth Low and see Jodrell in the distance - it's a part of my childhood that I'd hate to see go.

    • ... Cheshire is a largely agricultural, impoverished region ...

      Er, so we should worry and the huddled masses of Congleton and Alderley Edge should we? That'll get the Mail readers into line, sure... (for the benefit of anyone outside the UK, parts of this area south of Manchester are among the richest in England). I guess that Jodrell Bank made the Times because people have heard of it (as opposed to something like ALICE, which is arguably far more like to produce interesting science in the next few years, but which most people are unlikely to be able to tell apar

      • I very much doubt that the employees at Jodrell live in Alderley Edge (Congleton has some lower cost housing, so they may live there), but Jodrell Bank has produced some outstanding science over the years, and costs a fraction of the ALICE type extravagance that high energy physicists fetishise about.

        I've paid my taxes in too - but it's spending on multiculturalism, free houses for immigrants and the like that piss me off, not a few quid for a centre of excellence like Jodrell Bank.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Speare ( 84249 )
      As an ignorant American youth, the first and only cultural reference I received to Jodrell Bank is the mention of it in the opening of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I figured from context that it's not actually a financial bank, but an observatory of some kind (as they failing to detect the approaching Vogons). Even years later, that's pretty much the extent of my knowledge on it. Thanks for the details.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jd ( 1658 )
        I'm not sure what the origin of the name "Jodrell Bank" is - it's taken from the name of the local town. Placenames in Britain are curious - some that seem "obvious" are actually very old names where the spelling has been corrupted to remain sayable as the language in the region has been replaced. Sometimes, names have gone through up to four or five such corruptions. Occasionally, names will also be back-engineered - the Victorians were notable for that - where a name is modified or replaced to "make sense

  • Vogon Constructor Fleet (Score:5, Insightful)

    by surfinokie ( 828073 ) on Thursday March 06, 2008 @05:59PM (#22669818)
    If Joddrell Bank is closed who's going to fail to detect the Vogon's when they show up?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jim Hall ( 2985 )

      Some of you with high-user-IDs may not get the Vogon reference. From The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy:

      "The huge yellow somethings [Vogon Constructor Fleet] went unnoticed at Goonhilly, they passed over Cape Canaveral without a blip, Woomera and Jodrell Bank looked straight through them--which was a pity because it was exactly the sort of thing they'd been looking for all these years"

      IIRC, it's the same line from the radio play, the book, and the TV miniseries. :-)

    • The clue will be when the BBC starts broadcasting poetry in primetime again.

  • Not just Jodrell (Score:5, Informative)

    by zrq ( 794138 ) on Thursday March 06, 2008 @06:25PM (#22670108) Journal

    This is not just about Jodrell [bbc.co.uk]. The funding for a lot of UK astronomy [saveastronomy.org.uk] projects is being cut [saveastronomy.org.uk].

    At the moment, no one really seems to know why [shef.ac.uk].
    Disclaimer: I work for one of the projects under threat, so I might be a bit biased.

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Astronomers have a nasty habit of detecting space-based weaponry. There IS a master plan for a global fascist state led by the USA with Britain its lapdog, remember?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by zrq ( 794138 )

        In which case, they wouldn't have funded the projects in the first place.

        This isn't about deciding not to fund new projects. This is about cutting funding for existing projects (and staff) because someone somewhere got the figures wrong.

  • That's what they get (Score:4, Funny)

    by Darth ( 29071 ) on Thursday March 06, 2008 @07:01PM (#22670490) Homepage
    That's what they get for buying all that sub-prime debt. If more of these banks went out of business over it, maybe they'd learn something.

    p.s. I'm kidding. I know this is about radio astronomy and not about a financial institution.
  • Haven't they only recently done some work at Jodrell Bank? It might just have been replacing some bearings that support a dish (no small task, but nothing amazingly interesting) but it'd be a shame to lose it.

    I lived the other side of Manchester to Jodrell Bank and visited a few times with family and with school. That and Goonhilly are amazing places for anyone with even a slight scientific interest.

    Also, I've driven past one of the gates recently and I'm sure that the University of Manchester has some stak
    • None, we have far more financial problems to worry about than JB. Such as the huge budget deficit from building lots of nice new buildings for the arts and humanities people who being in no money.
  • There's a petition to save Jodrell bank here [pm.gov.uk].

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