Right then. 28 years later, here we are again. Bring on the Yellow Cowdenbeath! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇧🇷 #worldcup2026 #scobra

This is * insane *. STFC council minutes from December have been removed from their website, changed, and reposted. The new version rolls back on funding commitments made explicit in the initial version. I can't think of another adjective other than Trumpian behaviour.

Enjoyed the celebration of Egypt's opening goal. You would have to say that he walked like, well...🎶 #WorldCup

Stars of physics are in Westminster right now to call on the Government to halt funding cuts to astronomy and particle physics research. Professor Brian Cox called them "inexplicable", urging the Government to instead "trust, inspire and continue to invest in the next generation of scientists".

Yep. Even 26 years on, if I hear the opening bars of Rock DJ by Robbie Williams, I’m instinctively going to ask if I can help you.

Apparently a CIA official has done Johnny Cash's "One Piece at a Time" scam for real, but with gold bars instead of car parts. 😂

IOP President Paul Howarth and I have today written to Science Minister Lord Vallance calling for a full impact assessment of proposed STFC cuts to particle physics, astronomy and nuclear (PPAN) research.

How totally totally crass to find the destruction of the thousand careers of a thousand dedicated staff “exciting.” 1/3 www.timeshighereducation.com/news/notting...

"If you received an email from us (about xxxx), it was sent in error, so please disregard it." I did not receive any such email, but I'm now super-curious to know what it said...😂

I just sent this letter to the Science Minister and the CEO of UKRI concerning STFC's budgets

Cuts to UK Astronomy? It's all about the base(line). A short post on LinkedIn highlighting that the effective cuts to UK Astronomy funding are not some far off possibility - they have already started. www.linkedin.com/posts/profji...

If you really feel that "it is not right that other Councils (and disciplinary areas), EPSRC most notably, are called upon to make cuts towards the end of the financial year to meet overruns from STFC." then ponder the impact on EPSRC if STFC balanced its books by cutting funding to DIAMOND or ISIS.

Live footage of me after my last lecture of this semester...

Just discovered that the BBC are re-running This Life in full, starting this evening. 😀 It's definitely a product of its time, but I still think it's one of the best TV programmes ever made.

Wow. @pallabg.bsky.social has a obtained leaked document from STFC Council suggesting the origin of the STFC funding crisis was a deliberate decision (by?) 🧪🔭 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Possibly catchy but unnecessary: The new way of writing paper and proposal titles in astronomy. 🔭

Proud dad moment: the boy worked a Hamilton lyric into a homework essay. 👏🏻

Here is a copy of the open letter from the heads of physics departments across the UK- worth reading as it makes a lot of excellent points www.iop.org/about/news/o...

Don’t want to say the endless rain is getting to us, but the cycling club group chat has switched from which bikes are affordable or unaffordable, to which roads are fordable or unfordable. ☔️

Just encountered Captcha-style anti-robot measures on the NASA ADS search page. I guess it's a sign of the system creaking, presumably under the weight of endless scraping by LLMs. 😢 🔭

After spending more than half my life as an ex-pat, I sometimes wonder if I'm really still Scottish. But then I write "skoosher juice" on the shopping list, and I wonder less. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

This is yet another example where astronomers don't realise how good we have it. I do actually have a GS account, but the profile is private, and I haven't looked at it for many years. Everything we do is via NASA ADS, which is - and has always been - vastly superior to anything Google offered. 🔭

These cuts to physics research will be a disaster for UK scientists – and for our standing in the world www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The PPAN budget gets a 30% cut, and Harwell gets an expansion plan.

NASA ADS is still down? That's several days of patchy or no service now - starting to become a worry. 😬

The STFC Funding Crisis – Guest Post by George Efstathiou The following guest post by George Efstathiou is a response to the current STFC funding crisis I blogged about here, and specifically to a letter by the Executive Chair of STFC, Professor Michele Dougherty. I include the letter here for…

Open letter from Early Career Researchers to the UKRI investment plan. We can't let young people pay the price of "outcome-driven strategies". #stfc #ukri ecr-openletter-stfc.github.io If you are a postdoc or PhD, read and sign! 🧬🔭🔬⚗️🧪📡🛰️

The Star Formation Newsletter is back! 🔭☄️ In this first issue after our hiatus, we rounded up 83 abstracts from the past three months on star & planet formation.

When people talk about the idea that some universities must go under, there’s a certain tendency to behave as if these smaller local campuses are negligible- regrettable casualties perhaps but not ‘real’ universities. This report does a great job of illustrating why that’s wrong.

There were some very specific measures put in place after 2008, to separate STFC’s budget into three partitions and protect any of them from being raided to address problems in another. At some point this measure was abandoned, in pursuit of greater flexibility. Predictably things went wrong.

A rather grim read from the head of UKRI. Basically, the facilities run by STFC that support research across the UKRI's remit have become too expensive. Rather than cut those costs or spread the pain across research areas, the astro and particle physics unlucky enough to be in STFC gets slashed

A few thoughts... I moved back to the UK in 2009/10, during the first STFC funding crisis. That was the result of a botched reorganisation of the research councils, which created a huge budget shortfall. The resulting chaos saw projects cancelled, facilities closed, and grants slashed. (1/3) 🔭 🧪

New Science Technology & Facilities Council (STFC) letters confirm major funding reductions to areas including particle, nuclear and astrophysics, with a similar process expected for national facilities and labs. While investment in quantum, AI and green tech is welcome, the IOP warns cutting (1/3)

Many thoughts about this, but the doublespeak of the phrase "building on last year’s 15% reduction" is mind-boggling. 🔭🧪

The Royal Astronomical Society is gravely concerned at the drastic cuts to support for UK astronomy outlined by the Science and Technology Facilities Council. Read our statement 👉 ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre...

Published in #MNRAS: "Turbulence and dust fragility in protoplanetary discs", Tong et al. This is Fig. 3: for the caption & to read the paper please visit academic.oup.com/mnras/articl... @royalastrosoc.bsky.social @academic.oup.com

Noticed this new addition to NASA ADS. Looks like the move to SciX as the only interface is going to happen later this year. 🔭

10/10 to the UK university sending out PhD admissions reference requests with a submission deadline of 27 December. That’s next Saturday, and said institution is closed from 23 Dec to 5 Jan. 🙄

I'm happy to report that "Scenario 2" won't be necessary, as NASA has just communicated to us that SciX funding will continue in 2026 (albeit at a reduced level). Therefore, we will not be forcing astronomers to leave ADS, but rather develop a plan that allows a longer transition.

Well this is worrying. NASA has maintained funding for ADS but not SciX (a broader database). In response, management is planning to *close* ADS in Feb 2026, forcing all users to switch to SciX. ☄️🔭 Funding info: ads.harvard.edu/adsug/2025/0... Transition plan: ads.harvard.edu/adsug/2025/0...

I'm very excited and honoured to announce my new position 🧪🔭 in the UK, starting in January! See here for more info: www.ast.cam.ac.uk/news/profess...

. @profsera.bsky.social (UvA) benoemd tot Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy in Cambridge www.astronomie.nl/nieuws/sera-...

First time I saw it was when I lived in the US. I was the only person in the entire cinema who laughed at the “fridge magnate” joke. 😂

Peak World Cup that they just kept on drawing for Brazil's group over and over again until it came up Scotland. 🙄

Interesting journal club with the Exoplanets group at @physicsuol.bsky.social, looking at the transition from giant planets to brown dwarfs (arxiv.org/abs/2511.11818). They don't mention it, but is the gap at 2-3 MJ & [Fe/H]~0.2 called anything? If not, I'm calling it the Leicester doughnut hole 🔭

Rugby World Cup draw keeps with tradition: Scotland play Ireland, as always, and get a brutal path through the knockouts. England get the easiest group (and very nearly the weakest group possible), and a knockout draw that avoids any of the big teams until the semi-finals. 🙄

Finding amusement in the quirks of university systems. Due to the way the various data fields are truncated, the classes for my 4th-year course all appear in the timetable as "Supermassive Lecture..." 😂 🔭

Thoughts this morning. Yes, you can seal qualification for the World Cup with a string of clinical performances, winning every game and not conceding a single goal. But isn't it more fun to do it with a goal from inside your own half in the 8th minute of injury time? 😀 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿