Radio Silence

I’ve just read an article about the planet Pluto. The thoughts were that it would be a frozen, cratered relic. But when the New Horizons space probe flew past in 2015, it found flowing nitrogen glaciers, mountains of water ice and hints of a hidden ocean, on a world where the Sun looks like a bright star. Fascinating stuff. But our Government doesn’t like space science. 

A few days back the Government announced it needed to cut funding for our radio telescope at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire. A move that caused dismay amongst scientists who called it “short-sighted”. A polite way of putting it. 

I’m not a space scientist, a Cosmologist or an Astrophysicist. But I bloody love reading about our galaxy and the wider Universe. It’s amazing, inspiring stuff. When I discover facts like it takes just over eight minutes for light to travel from the sun to Earth, that’s me, mind blown. But now Jodrell Bank is under threat, we in the UK are going to lose the ability to learn what’s out there. 

Not only that, but we will be damaging history. Jodrell Bank is a Unesco World Heritage Site. And for bloody good reason. It is dominated by the enormous Lovell Telescope and its 250ft (76m) wide dish, which can be seen 20 miles (32km) away in Manchester. Amazing, truly amazing. 

Before Sir Bernard Lovell founded the observatory Most observatories used visible light to find objects in space. But a radio telescope listens. Radio signals from distant stars and galaxies get turned into pictures and scientific data. Marvellous stuff. 

The other point is, this government is pissing money away all over the place. Jodrell Bank needs about 2.5 million quid. That’s nothing in the wider scheme of things. It makes no sense to cut off our ability to continue finding out what’s out there. 

Let me lay out some of the facts. Because of its massive scale, the telescope picks up incredibly faint signals, and when combined with other instruments on-site, it gives researchers a properly detailed view of the cosmos. 

It also links up with the e-Merlin network right across the UK, joining forces with five other dishes, found in Pickmere, Darnhall, Knockin, the old RAF Defford site, and way over in Cambridge, to boost its power even further. Brilliant stuff.

This observatory has been at the heart of finding supermassive black holes, uncovering fresh galaxies, and even keeping tabs on spacecraft. Proper, serious science. Work from the e-Merlin network has really helped explain the birth of planets and stars, and the way galaxies change over time. What’s not to like?

Even though other dishes have grown bigger than the Lovell Telescope, constant upgrades mean it’s still the backbone of British radio astronomy. Thousands of researchers rely on its data, yet we’re looking at 28 jobs being scrapped if someone doesn’t find the cash to keep it going. The UK Research and Innovation lot are slashing the budget right as work starts on that massive Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project across South Africa and Australia. Daft. It makes no sense. 

I know some folk will say that space doesn’t matter. Not when people need homes, the NHS is a mess and adult care needs a serious revamp. But, like I said, 2.5 million is small change, for us to stay at the cutting edge of physics. Furthermore, our lot are pulling the plug on research at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope way over in Hawaii. On top of that, they’ve slashed the cash for two vital bits of kit on the Extremely Large Telescope currently being put together in Chile. It’s a total mess. I reckon they really didn’t like physics at school. 

Meanwhile, the New Horizons probe is in the constellation Sagittarius, a mere 5.98 billion miles from Earth. A radio signal from us to the probe takes eight hours and fifty five minutes. Think about that over your next brew, I know I will.